FAMILIA

It was the first time we had been interviewed for TV news. I had just gone from excitement to the embarrassing sense of rejection you feel when someone trashes what you think is your best idea ever. We were saying our goodbyes, grouped around the bar in Elton, the gay club where Izabela and I teach dance. The journalist was reporting on our same sex dance classes. TVN got interested because two female Israeli dancers performed in Dancing with the Stars – they were looking for similar stories. I had liked the journalist from the beginning. Ola was about my age, friendly, and clearly interested in getting to know us, asking about life in Tri-City, and how Poland was different from the States. We compared notes on work, hobbies, and Warsaw, where Ola lived. Being an open, all-inclusive California type, I was more than ready for a chat with another career woman just starting out. I began telling her what it was like being the youngest person among our colleagues and friends. She laughed. “I know how you feel,” she said. “I’m twenty seven, so I’m always feeling like everyone at work is older than me. Isn’t it a lot to live up to?” I decided that if we’d met under different circumstances, we might have become friends.

After Izabela and I had danced for a while, the camera man filming take after take, Ola went back to her questions. How had our respective parents reacted when we came out? Did we have brothers or sisters? How did our two families feel about our relationship? Izabela told Ola that since she had to accept her parents’ singularities while growing up, she expected them to accept hers when she became an adult. Since she came from a family of characters, she didn’t think to ask for approval. I told the story of coming out to my mother as she was trying to rush out of the house for work, then interrupting my own revelation to ask if we had any cream. “Coming out feels like such a long time ago,” I said. Ola seemed fascinated. She then asked who in our families was the most supportive of us.

“We don’t come from close-knit families,” I said. “But I’d like to tell you about Halina. She’s Izabela’s ex, actually, and she’s like family to us--someone we really value.”

At this, Ola jumped in. “Sorry, Lilly-Marie, but I don’t really have time to hear about this. I don’t know Halina, I don’t know who she is, and there’s no point in you telling me about her if I’m going to trash it.”

Later on we would wish we’d pointed out that Ola didn’t know our parents either, but was eager to hear all about them. For now I stood in a stunned, angry silence.

“The thing is,” I said, “you were asking who in our families is most supportive, and Halina is definitely one of those people.” I wanted to bring some of the earlier, light-hearted energy back into the room. Hopefully she would at least understand.

“Maybe some other time, when you expand your dance school.” I didn’t point out that we had no school. Ola was already collecting her coat and purse.

Still, we were surprised when, watching the interview later that night, we found that she’d edited out almost everything we’d said anyway.


Family, or my own close network of people, had always represented my central focus. The first thing I remember telling Izabela when we met was that it’s not creative work or politics or prestige, but people that brought substance to my life. I didn’t use the word family very often back then. It was only after moving here, and listening to people talk about the importance of “family,” meaning blood relatives, that I realized this was a value I shared. The only trouble was that my definition was different from theirs. Even as I nodded in emphatic agreement, I knew we weren’t agreeing on precisely the same thing. After the meeting with Ola, I thought back to a conference Izabela and I had attended a month earlier. We had each been asked to explain to our partners what we were most passionate about, and I chose family. My discussion partner, a middle-aged psychologist, who later admitted that she’d braced herself for a sappy-superficial account of what she called traditional Polish family values, was surprised when I talked not only about my supportive parents, but also about my close circle of friends, the people I’d lived and worked around for most of my adult life. My partner liked what I had to say, but my concept of family was obviously a revelation to her. I was surprised.

Izabela explained that “family” is part of the political and religious rhetoric here, much as it is among right-wing politicians and evangelists in the States. “That’s the only meaning of the word that people here are used to,” she said.

But this didn’t stop me from being umbraged at the hitherto nice reporter. “All she cares about is blood relatives,” I said. “As soon as I went outside her own little traditional, highly specific definition of the term, I was weird and she was ready to bale.”

“I don’t think it ever occurred to Ola that we were introducing queer family values,” Izabela said. “She probably thought that we were chatty and flippant, and wanted to talk about our buddies.”

“I didn’t think we were flippant!”

“Well, she certainly infantilized us. We are two grown up people expected to talk
about what mommy and daddy think about our lives…”

If Ola’s definition of family was strangely limited to me, my definition, probably to her, and certainly to my own immediate family, was strangely loose. Family, as far as I was concerned, was like a chart drawn on paper with flexible margins. Some names—those of my parents and other blood relatives, were permanent. Others—close friends who drifted away, former mentors, could be moved to the side or, in rare cases, crossed out. But the chart could always expand if a new name, a new category, needed fitting in. That isn’t to say that family was a status to be treated lightly—it often took quite a few years before I would consider even the closest of friends as family, and relative to the number of friends I had, it happened seldom.

My parents had divorced; then settled down with new partners. To me, this seemed normal. Still, the stepfamily situation confused most people. My mother wasn’t actually married to Paul, her live-in boyfriend, when I started referring to him as my stepfather. My use of the title annoyed her, but I didn’t know what else to do. “I can’t keep calling him “my mother’s boyfriend” forever,” I said at sixteen, infusing the last three words with typical teenaged disgust. “You’ve been living together for three years.”

When I was 18, and my father and stepmother split up, she and I continued our relationship, chatting by phone and spending weekends together when I was home from college. Naturally, I kept on calling her my stepmother, and her son my stepbrother. There was also a new spot on my personal family tree for Donna, my dad’s new girlfriend, a cross between a buddy and a mentor.

After leaving home, I lived, studied, and worked with the friends who would, in time, become part of my extended family. Jennifer and I shared food and housing even when neither of us had any money to speak of. The day Laurel told me she’d gotten her first teaching job was the first time I understood what it was like to feel viscerally happy and excited for another person. And when her boyfriend got cancer and I was in Poland, I felt as much guilt as if it were my sister who needed me. Later, it was Betsy who welcomed me back on my first visit to the States, then moved me into my sublet before my parents could make it down to Oakland. When an awkward situation arose between me and Francesca, the professor who was like a second mother, we didn’t drift apart as most teachers and students would have—we worked things out.

When Izabela and I moved to Poland, I started calling her my Polish family of one, which came about because the cover letter I sent out when looking for work explained that I was moving to Poland “to become part of a Polish family.” She called me her little mother when I praised her for eating eggs, cheerfully explaining that it was full of protein and would make her beautiful hair and teeth strong, and counseled her that no matter what else came up, her own writing was the priority. She was like an older sister when she handed her fabulous Urban Outfitters clothes down to me, and a bossy older sister when she marched me into the bathroom and threw foundation on my face. We were naughty girls on a sleepover when we stayed up too late, eating ice-cream and watching movies, and colleagues when we talked with other teachers in the English department office. We shifted from romantic to silly, from serious decision makers to conspirators, to pairing up as star and worshipful companion. It was with Izabela that I learned to share one i-pod, take her hairspray without asking, spend Polish Christmas Eves my parents could have no concept of, and speak my first words in a language and country about which I knew less than the toddlers we saw on the bus in those first months. When my private students asked why I had come to Poland, I didn’t mention that Izabela and I were a couple, thinking that coming out to them would be unwise. But I did mention that I had moved to Poland to get married.

In the spring, Izabela’s mother, confused and nearing the end of her life, but still buoyant with optimism, came to live with us. She called me słoneczko, the Polish endearment meaning little sun, and told amazing stories of her life as a traveling country dentist, which Izabela translated. I called her my mother-in-law, but when the nurse at the hospital, where she was transferred only a few weeks after moving into our house, called her my grandmother, I didn’t contradict her. Jadwiga was in her eighties, and with my own grandmother gone, the role of mother-in-law and grandmother somehow conflated. But aside from her mother, who passed away in late March, Izabela had almost no relatives, so my Polish family was destined to remain small.

It wasn’t until last summer that I met Halina, and my already wild family tree underwent a careening transformation I hadn’t anticipated. Izabela and I had known each other for almost three years by then, and I had been hearing about Halina, her ex, ever since we met. It may not sound surprising that Halina and I hadn’t been introduced, but under the circumstances, it bothered me. She and Izabela had been together for ten years, and continued to share an apartment for the following two until we left California. I supported this arrangement, partly because I wasn’t ready to be a live-in girlfriend, but mostly because they appeared to rely on each other in certain essential ways. Both had emigrated from Poland, and they seemed to be all the family each other had even though they were clearly broken up.

Izabela, whose English was better by far than Halina’s, had helped her to find work, researching job possibilities and filling out applications. Halina, in her turn, had paid the bills while Izabela was earning her doctorate, leaving her the space she needed for thinking and writing. I might not have met Halina in real life, but I knew her as a catalogue of the images from Izabela’s stories: Halina making jellied fish on Christmas Eve, Halina and Izabela buying fabulous decadent sushi, ice-cream and alcohols, Halina rousting Izabela out of her room to carve pumpkins on Halloween, Halina drinking and unhappy within her isolation, but a warrior at heart, battling with phantasmatic digitalized enemies at her computer, Halina, a physical therapist turned caregiver, attending to elderly clients with expert tenderness, Halina making sandwiches of Izabela’s favorite cheese for her to take on our flight to New York. The way I saw it, Halina too had been Izabela’s family of one once upon a time. Halina was, in part, the keeper of Izabela’s past, and probably her present. She would always be important. I was curious. I needed to know her for myself.

Izabela, encouraged by my pleading, tried to persuade Halina to meet me. But Halina was having none of it. We once found ourselves and Halina at the same Valentine’s dance in Oakland, but still she wouldn’t come over and say hello. In one way I was disappointed, even though, in another way, I understood. I was the new girlfriend. It wasn’t Halina’s problem that I was curious, that I already thought of us as connected, if distantly, through Izabela.

Then, in July, when I returned to Oakland after my first year in Poland and ended up subletting a studio only two blocks from Halina, things changed. Izabela, who had arrived in California before me, was staying with her and persuaded her to come along on a late-evening visit. Even though Izabela had told me Halina would be coming with her, I couldn’t quite believe this was really happening. Halina had agreed to meet me! Still, from what Izabela had said on the phone, Halina was none too sure about this. “If she’s not ready, no big deal,” I said. “We’ll have years ahead for her to rethink.”

At first when I opened the door, I thought only Izabela had come in the end. When you can’t visually detect people, silence is synonymous with invisibility. Izabela was talking away about Halina’s being angry with her. At last, when Halina finally spoke a few seconds later, I jumped.

“I’m not staying. I’m just bringing Izabela over to say goodbye. Then we need to leave so she can finish packing.”

“I’m done packing already,” said Izabela who indeed was scheduled to fly back to Poland in the morning. “Can’t you just stay for a glass of wine?”

“Yes, please do. You can have wine, tea, whatever you prefer.” I was gabbling. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

I held out my hand. Instead of taking it, Halina said something in Polish. Later Izabela would tell me that Halina had been looking right at me when she spoke, that even in that first instant she was, in Izabela’s words, taken with me. But back then I assumed Halina was ignoring me.

“She’s saying she doesn’t want to shake hands over the threshold,” Izabela explained.

“Then please come in.” But she wouldn’t budge. I was utterly confused. Later on Izabela told me about the Polish superstition that if two people shake hands on opposite sides of a doorsill, they will quarrel. I haven’t risked it since.

Now I felt myself shaking, a mixture of resolve and nervousness making my hands go cold and my mouth go dry. I thought Haline would turn around and run. But I wasn’t going to let her get away so easily, not after all the time I’d spent waiting while she eluded me.

Still, this woman was more than twenty years older than I. She’d known Izabela a lot longer. She was hostile. And I felt silly—a naive, overly cheerful girl with a too big smile making a ridiculous attempt to persuade a wild creature to like me, to trust me, to let me lure her in just because I was young and sincere. What kept me standing there, telling her how glad I was to have her there and entreating her to come in, were the images I’d stored up from Izabela’s stories of her.

Halina did step inside, but just enough for the handshake to be carried out safely. Her grip was warm, firm and surprisingly strong. She hovered in the apartment’s narrow hallway, the entrance door still wide open behind her so she could escape in a flash. Not knowing what else to do, I walked down the hall and into the kitchen to join Izabela, who was already busying herself with bottles and glasses for the two of us. “I really hope she’ll stay,” I said as if Halina wasn’t within earshot.

I returned to the door. “Halina,” I said, “I’m so glad you’re here, and I’d really love for you to have a glass of wine. But I can’t continue to have a conversation with you standing in the doorway like this. So please, come all the way in and let me close the door.”

She stood still and silent another moment. Then, slowly, she took a few steps further into the hall. “I don’t understand why you want me here,” she said.

“Because I’ve been wanting to meet you for so long. I know you’re angry with Izabela because you think she made you come here, but really I’m the one who was so anxious for it to happen.”

“But why?”

I was prepared for this. As I washed dishes earlier that night it had become almost a fantasy—finally getting to answer this question directly. “You’ve been good to Izabela, and that means a lot to me. She doesn’t really have any family other than you and me, so as bizarre as this may sound, I feel that we’re connected somehow. I understand you might not agree with that, but you’re an important part of her life, and I would really appreciate the chance to know you even slightly.”

After a moment’s pause, she answered. “All right. I’ll have one glass of wine.”

Our conversation was polite but halting. Halina and I, both curious, were still treading carefully around each other. I asked her about her work as a caregiver, and she asked me how I liked Polish food, and if I’d gotten along with Izabela’s mom. Only Izabela seemed at ease. She had taken a seat on the bed, having no other choice since Halina and I occupied what chairs were available in the small studio. Izabela reached behind her and lifted my ancient stuffed bear down from the pillows.

Ted, at twenty six, is unlike any other bear I’ve seen, boasting an expensively designed hand-knitted wool sweater, an unusual amount of character and humanity in his face, and the imposing air of an elder statesman. She introduced him to Halina, just as if adults introduced stuffed animals to each other every day. “Ted is a magical creature,” she said. “He’s traveled widely and had amazing experiences.”

Inwardly, I was horrified. Ted was indeed well-traveled, especially for a stuffed bear, and having remained with me through countless moves and other personal dramas, he was a wise and consistent part of my life. Still, great as he was, I didn’t generally introduce Ted to virtual strangers. What if Halina, still skittish, deemed me strange and infantile?

But Halina gazed at Ted with interest. “How old is he?” She reached out to take him from Izabela. “He has a long tail for a bear.”

It was true. Ted’s tail, once a button-shaped puff of fur, had thinned and lengthened so that it resembled the tail of any other animal.

“The tail confuses people,” I told her. “This poor guy is often mistaken for a rat or an otter.”

Halina handed Ted back to Izabela, but she was clearly impressed. In the end Halina stayed for over an hour, leaving only when the wine bottle was empty. I wish I could say it was my innate finesse and sweet smile that made this happen, but really it was Ted who did the trick.

Izabela left for Poland the next day, and a few weeks later Halina returned to my studio, bringing wine and pizza for the two of us. The first thing she did when she came into the high-ceilinged main room was to walk to the window. “You have the most beautiful bamboo tree out here,” she said. I joined her at the window and we stood, contemplating the tree that no one before her had mentioned to me.


Apart from Jadwiga and Halina, my Polish family didn’t expand much beyond Izabela. That was fine with me, but when we met Pavko, it was as if our world, small in that first year of living here, had doubled in size. It was late August, and we still hadn’t found a good place to dance. Izabela had seen an ad online for a new gay club in Sopot, and we decided to go by and check it out. It was off the beaten track, hidden at the end of a street sporting huge, well-kept villas. At first we thought we came to the wrong place until we heard a distant thrum of music, the only hint of partying audible from the street.

We rang the bell, feeling like we were being admitted into a secret society. The lock clicked, and a tall, willowy, dark haired man opened the door. With his beard, and the colossal jewels on his fingers, the impression he gave was that of a dashing and jovial Spanish pirate.

“Witam,” he said with an expansive smile that included both of us. His eyes lighted on Izabela and his pleasure grew even more. It turned out that they had been on the same discussion panel together not long before, hailing the work of a young gay photographer who documented darkrooms in gay clubs as places of resistance. Pavko knew all about Izabela as a writer, and was thrilled to have her in his club. He took our coats and ushered us up the steep staircase, talking all the time as we made a circuit around the club that was clearly his pride and joy. “Elton is for you,” he kept saying.

I was as ecstatic as he was. This man spoke English, adored us already, and wanted us to dance the night away. It didn’t take long before we’d asked him how he would feel about our holding dance classes at Elton. Again, he was overjoyed. “That’s just what Elton needs,” Pavko said. “I’ll take the classes too, and maybe I’ll even meet the love of my life."

Pavko had named his club after Elton John, who had been an important figure for the Polish anti-communist resistance movement. On our first visit to Elton, Pavko told me that in the early 80’s, Elton John denounced martial law in Poland and advocated strongly, on an international level, in favor of the Solidarity movement. Because he was an international celebrity, his voice mattered to the point that his support for the underground movement embarrassed the communists then in power. He, like the pope, was one of the important figures in the world who spoke out in support of the anti-communist movement. “A few years ago,” Pavko said, “he was invited to Sopot for an anniversary of the Solidarity people--no longer oppressed but members of the ruling party in parliament by now. These were the same people endorsing the homophobia and hate speech embraced by our government. He looked out into his audience and said: ‘Leave the gays alone.’ This made these ultra-conservatives very uncomfortable. Now they would do anything to forget that they ever relied on his support.”

The club itself had a bizarre enough history. Pavko told us that before it became Elton, it was once run by the mafia. Apparently pani Ewa, the bartender, had worked there in mafia times and had amazing stories to tell of Elton’s previous life as a club full of gangsters. “There was so much bad energy in here that we had to perform a sort of exorcism when we took over the place,” Pavko said laughing.

We soon decided that Pavko was the most positive person we knew. He was Buddhist, believed in signs, the power of songs, and love. When he and I danced together during class we pretended we were the two transvestites, or “ladies,” from Little Britain, our favorite TV show. Pavko gloried in being gay, or queer as he, Izabela, and I like to call it. His favorite color was pink, which, according to him, represented queerness, light, and joy. He festooned the walls of our Facebook profiles with dazzling comments on our photos, funny and beautiful posters advertising our dance classes, and notices for whatever blasts Elton was planning. After having no one around who understood the magic of dance the way we did, it felt like we’d entered a new, more promising phase with Pavko urging us on. Izabela and I were addicted to his energy, and counted the days until Friday, when we taught Night Club two-step at Elton and then, when class was over, sat down for a beer and a long chat with Pavko about love, dance, and new ideas.

Still, Pavko had another identity, which he wore during the day with equal aplomb. He was an architect, and had designed Villa Antonina, a lavish Sopot hotel built to resemble a French castle. I pictured my mom coming to Poland for a visit and staying in the decadent Marie Antoinette suite Pavko had designed, and being impressed as only a Napa valley realtor with an impeccable sense of style can. She would sit down with Pavko, Izabela, and me over wine and sushi, and would glow in the presence of Pavko, who would adore her charming, relaxed approach to classy artistic people, and even make her laugh – a rare and wonderful occurrence. Pavko was the perfect balance between fun and business — someone who knew how to host a glorious event, write a contract, and remember that fine line between business and friendship. Izabela asked his advice when she wanted to run for the city board, and I took his opinion on my outfits seriously.

It wasn’t until after knowing Pavko for some time that we discovered he had a twin brother. We pictured a second Pavko, and marveled at the idea that there could be two of them filling up the world with their pink energy. “We’re actually nothing alike,” Pavko told us when we voiced our amazement. “In fact, we aren’t even speaking at the moment.” We were sorry to hear it, but never dared to ask questions.

In December Pavko changed his Facebook profile, and a glance told us that he was born on August 24th. This may be hard to believe, but Izabela and I have the same birthday, and, even more amazingly, ours is August 24th, too. Pavko was as excited by this news as we were. “We’re twins,” he kept saying.

Literal minded person that I am, I at first insisted that we were triplets. “There are three of us,” I said. “We can’t be twins.” But in the end I decided Pavko’s word made the most sense. We were connected, we adored each other, we needed each other. “He’s right,” I said to Izabela. “And we’re not even fraternal twins like he and his brother – we’re identical.”



Photo copyright Mona Blank