Our new baby
grandson with his parents came to visit us during Christmas. It
was so precious to watch him, to hold him, and to play with him. He is our very
first grandchild. Lately I have begun to reflect on what it may have been like
for my grandparents when I visited them with my parents so many years ago.
My grandfather
Joseph married my grandmother - already a mother to seven children - after her
first husband died. He instantly became a father to a big family. My Mom, though,
was his own firstborn child, followed by two more girls. He eventually became the genetic grandfather
to two boys and a girl. Since I am his only genetic granddaughter, I like to
think that this was kind of a special relationship.
I saw my
Grandpa during the summers when my parents had vacation from work and we would
“go up north” to “Grandpa’s farm.”
My Mom would
say Grandpa could do most anything, and that it was amazing that he would marry
a woman with seven children and become their father.
I’ve learned
that when he was just sixteen, he left his hometown of Berent, present day Kościerzyna (a town in Kashubia in northern Poland), to come
to America in 1904. He settled in Milwaukee and became a streetcar conductor.
He met my grandmother and they married in June 1918.
They moved – with all seven children - to a
farm in central Wisconsin.
He became a farmer. My first memories of him are of watching
him, and a little kitty, when he was in the barn near the creek milking the few
cows he owned. He gave me rides in a wheelbarrow.
He was an organist. I listened to him practice on a
foot-pedal organ in the living room before going to church. I felt privileged to be with him in the choir
loft when he played the organ for Mass on Sunday mornings. Mom said his favorite
musical instrument, however, was the violin.
He was an electrician. I remember going with him when he
installed wiring in new homes that were going up along the highway leading into
town. He drove a very old black car that had that old car upholstery smell.
When I sat in the front seat next to him, all I could see was the blue sky
because I was still very small and could only look up out the window.
He was a town health officer and Town Clerk. He collected taxes for the town. He
figured out everything on his adding machine with the handle on the side. In my memory I can still hear the “tap, tap,
tap, barumph” sound of that machine as he worked in the evenings or on a
Saturday morning. Sometimes he let me play on that adding machine: “tap, tap,
tap, barumph.”
He liked ice cream, and he enjoyed Canada Dry ginger ale. For
breakfast he liked to cook his own oatmeal in a big pot on the stove. At the
time I wondered how anyone could eat that stuff, and I was impressed.
I remember going up to Grandpa’s farm during a very, very
cold winter season. That was not our time of year to visit, but Grandma was
dying. Early in the evening my Mom drove
by herself in our ‘49 Chevy to get the parish priest to come to the house so he
could pray with Grandma and the family. We were there when Grandma died. I
recall Grandpa sitting by himself on the green couch in the living room near
their bedroom. He was teary-eyed, just kind of staring ahead, and looking so
very lost and alone. In another bedroom was his daughter, the one who never
married and who stayed on the farm, and who was then very ill in the final
stages of cancer. It was a very sad time.
During the years that followed, my Grandpa developed
dementia, could no longer care for himself, and moved in with Grandma’s oldest
daughter and her husband. They cared for him until he died in 1967.
My Grandpa was very tall with soft blue eyes. He was a
caring, gentle person of many accomplishments, a man of strong character and
faith. He spoke both Polish and English. He liked to laugh, as did my Grandma.
I hope that some of his strength of character and gentleness
and faith can be part of my life and that I, in turn, can pass this on to my
family and grandson. I do have blue eyes, and I am tall, just like him, and...
my first name for him - I called him “Pumpa.”
