Home Away From Home

It's been a week now. A week that can only be described as... mixed. A week that's surfaced hopes, goals, and every insecurity I'd ever buried within myself. I don't really know why I started blogging (haha, best word ever!) but there's something in telling a story that seems to calm the ups and downs of experience and focus all those moments and thoughts into something meaningful, if only for myself.

I suppose I could rack my brain to remember and chronicle all of the experiences of the past week, but instead I'll choose just one: The Little Czech Bakery inside the Shell Gasoline Station in the town of West, Texas. That's I-35 Exit 353, in case you too need a home away from home.

I won't lie, I was feeling good and down. I cherish being busy, it gives me focus and motivation to keep doing what I'm doing plus some. So when I'm not classically busy and I'm also physically isolated, it takes effort not to think my way into life 20 years from now. Not a good scene, indeed. It got so bad that by mid-afternoon I had thought myself into being the 45-year old cat lady who hasn't left her apartment in 2 years, and that is NOT me. I needed a reality check. I had to get out.

Now there was a period in my "youth" in which I was intensely interested in genealogy. I pestered my parents with questions about the "Old Country" (of which there were a few), poured over tattered black and whites of my great grandfather in his bakery, and giggled at snapshots of my father in a Christening gown. I was intrigued by the mysterious (and still argued over) origins of my last name, and loved to engage my father in stories about his Army days. An interest in our heritage is a phase I think we all go through in our journey toward self-discovery.

I only met my father's mother twice: once before I was old enough to form memories, and then again as a teenager. By that time I'd already formed an opinion about the woman my father was estranged from for 8 years, and she'd begun to deteriorate from Alzheimer's. It was, above all, an odd experience. I remember her telling me (50 times in 2 days) about her time as a "Bohemian actress." Of course my father later pulled me aside to clarify this was actually a short stint in the high school drama club. I did not, at that time, associate being Bohemian with any particular culture. For some reason I thought Bohemian was synonymous with quirky and artsy, not the people formerly known as Czechoslovakians.

But when my father began receiving unsolicited postcards in broken English from the Czech Republic, my interest in genealogy suddenly resurfaced. It went on for years, every 6 months or so an exotic picture with claims of family ties would arrive in our mailbox. My father ignored them, convinced it was a mistake or a scam, until the pictures came. Photos he recalled seeing as a young boy in Chicago, of people with no names but familiar faces, and the kicker: a military photo of his grandfather in the Spanish Civil War. Finally, he wrote back. What began was a correspondence that would end with a trip to the "Old Country" and connection to a culture I'd only recently begun to associate with.

Last year I visited my father's cousin Jiri, who goes by George if you speak English. George is an interesting character for certain... 28 years old, a pastry chef at the Four Seasons Prague, and a man with more generous energy than anyone I've ever met. He recently wrote that they're considering giving him a television cooking show there, which I actually believe having seen his smiling face presenting intricate chocolates and towering-tier cakes in Czech magazines. One of my classic memories of George was a visit to his "museum." In my great grandmother's hometown of Milin, where George's parents and sister still live, they've given him a room in the town museum which is packed to the door with antique relics and random finds. Wagon wheels, 1950's toasters, an artifact from the 1300's he found in his backyard, and on and on. That's the kind of character my second cousin is. It's kind of fantastic.

George and his Grandfather, Milin, Czech Republic

So, feeling overwhelmed and undernourished, I took a (very short) road trip to the town of West, a respite from the heat and isolation of my current Waco. When I exited to a sign that read, "Czech out our Kolaches" I felt the cloud begin to lift and my yearning for apricots and poppyseed begin to grow. What's more, I felt a yearning for connection, for meaning, for understanding in a foreign land. I don't know that anyone understood me, but the gruff woman who sold me 3 authentic kolaches and then wished me good day, reminded me of my time with George and the strange connection that ties people by blood who'd never otherwise meet.

This post has nothing to do with graduate school, or my class, or Waco, or changing nearly every aspect of my life. And I think that "nothing" is just what I need right now. Oh, and a kolache.