Going Home

My father settled into his new job easily.  He was teaching American history, calculus, and a graduate course on the history of the Soviet space program.  Between classes he spent time in the language lab, helping kids learn Russian, German, or English.  He’d even picked up a little Kazakh while in Baikonur.  He was, after all, the coolest dad on the planet.

I had developed a sudden passion for the baking industry.  Alek just happened to need a delivery guy.  The bicycle I rode all over our part of Warsaw, at lunch and at supper, quickly whipped me into shape.  It was a good excuse for me to hang out around Renata.

I’ll never be able to tell if it was my interest in a lady, or in my genes.  My grandfather was a baker, after all.  One morning, as I walked in the bakery, it occurred to me.  I belonged here.

During the slow times between lunch and supper, Alek showed me the ropes.  Unlike my previous educational experiences, I was a motivated student.  A year passed.  I had worked up the courage to ask Renata on a date.  We were now a thing.

I realized how much had changed when Alek said, “Me and the lady are going to spend a week in Krakow with Sophie.  How about you run the afternoon shift while I’m gone?  I can find a high school kid to do the deliveries.”

The feeling in my stomach may not have been total panic, but it was close.  No one had ever suggested I could be responsible for something like running a bakery.  Renata put her hand on my shoulder and said, “You’ll be fine.”  I said I’d do it.

Somehow the bakery survived me being in charge for a week.  I was too busy to be terrified.  Whenever I got that look on my face, Renata would say, “What would Alek do if he were here?”  That worked for everything except the bags of flour.  After the first time, I got someone to help me carry them up from the basement.

Next, Alek started rotating me through different jobs in the bakery.  I’d had fun being the delivery guy but this was even better.  More time around Renata.  I was still adjusting to this “being an adult” thing.  It got more difficult when Alek said, “Sit down Serge, we need to talk.”

He said, “Next year, I’ll be 70 years old.  It is time for me to retire.  I’ve spoken to the Mlecznys.  They are in agreement.  You should take over the bakery.”

1994 was a banner year for me.  I got promoted to manager at the Mleczny Bakery.  And, Renata and I were married.  Artur helped me pack as I moved from his apartment, in with my new bride and her daughters.  My pal Jan came through for me and got The Bleeding Blues to play at the wedding reception.

Artur and I had found our grooves.  Life went forward, full blast, for the next five years.  Until the phone rang, in December 1999.

The students in his 8 o’clock calculus class knew something was up.  Artur was never late.  The superintendent used his master key when Artur didn’t answer the doorbell.  He found the mathematician on the floor.  He’d suffered a major stroke.

I was in shock as the doctor tried to explain the decision I needed to make.  I had no idea what a tissue plasminogen activator was.  It had something to do with dissolving blood clots.  My father lay in a bed, unable to speak or move the left side of his body.  

The doctor said, “If we give him the medication, and it works as designed, it will dissolve the clots that are blocking the arteries in his brain.  Hopefully we would see a significant improvement in his condition.” 

“The downside is, it could cause severe bleeding and kill him in a matter of minutes.”

I looked at the frail man my father had become.  He was a few weeks from his 80th birthday.  I thought about how he had lived his life.  Artur escaped from the Nazis and openly defied the Communists.  He had faced death, and laughed in its face.  I told the doctor, “Give him the medication.”

The gamble paid off.  Within hours, Artur was moving his left side, and his speech began to improve.  But there was no getting around the severity of his condition.  He was too weak to feed himself, much less stand up, or walk.  He faced a long and difficult recovery.  The doctor said, “We have a good rehabilitation center here in Warsaw.  However, your father is an American citizen.  The truth is, he would have access to more sophisticated treatments if he were there.”

I looked at Renata.  She put her arm around me and said, “When you return to Warsaw, I will be waiting.  But now, you know what you have to do.”

While the rest of the world partied on New Year’s Eve 1999, Artur and I were on a chartered medical transport jet, heading west.  While millions of Americans slept off their hangovers the next morning, I filled out the paperwork to admit Artur to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Things were dicey at first.  Artur's personality would go back and forth, between his usual self, and that of an angry child.  The staff explained that was not unusual.  The sheer panic of a human trapped inside a failing body can overwhelm anyone.  “Be patient with your dad, and don’t take anything he says personally.  Family support is an important factor in stroke recovery.”

The family support got better, and worse, when my mother showed up.  At first, Artur did not want to see her.  But as he got better, they started getting along better.  Not what they once had, but a truce of sorts.

After three months, Artur was walking on his own, and could talk without difficulty.  But it was clear his mind was not the same.  He would never teach again, or live by himself.  The case worker told me, “We’ve done everything we can do here.  Your father will need a lot of care for the rest of his life.  I suggest you take him back to Huntsville, our staff will help you find a good assisted living facility for him.”

My brother helped me move a bed and some furniture from Mom’s house into a facility called The Atria, just a few miles away.  Darek had moved back to Huntsville after putting in his twenty with the Army.  Now he worked for a NASA subcontractor.  He could see the building where Artur worked from the window by his cube.

The family met and agreed it was time for me to return to Poland.  Artur was as stable as he was going to get.  I couldn’t believe how happy I was when Renata and the girls met me at the airport.  I was ready for life to get back to normal.

Which it did, for a few months.  The phone rang again on December 30th.  Artur had another stroke.  For the second year in a row, I spent New Years on an airplane.

EPILOGUE

Sergei Korolev died on January 14, 1966, at the age of 59.  He never received the recognition he deserved as a rocketry pioneer.  But I am proud to carry his name and I will not forget.

Wernher von Braun died on June 16, 1977.  Two years before, the city of Huntsville honored him by naming their new civic center after him.  He was 65 years old.

We were in the cafeteria at the hospital.  I was trying to get Artur to eat some ice cream.  Few things will shock you like having your father look you in the eye and tell you, “I’m never going to eat anything, ever again.”  He didn’t.

I held my father’s hand while he took his last breath.  He lived one hell of a life.  Artur Wlodarski died on February 13, 2001.  

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Artur Wlodarski is a fictional character.  But many of the details of this story come straight from my life.  Grandpa ran a bakery, I was born in Huntsville and my dad worked on the Gemini and Apollo projects for 9 years.  I grew up around him and many other rocket scientists.

My mother knew von Braun and occasionally socialized with the German scientists and their families.  In 2011 we ate lunch with Heinz Hilton.  Not a rocket scientist, but he became known as von Braun’s architect.  He designed the laboratories and apartments at Peenemünde, and many of the original buildings at the Marshall Space Flight Center.

Mr. Hilton and his wife were charming.  He made me an origami elephant out of a dollar bill.  I used it for the cover photo of My Credit Score Is 847.  He was 102 years old.

In real life, I wasn’t even close to the rebel I portrayed here.  I was a good student and spent every free moment on the golf course.  Serge’s ne’er do well character in this story is based on a guy I’ll call Eddie.  I went to school with Eddie and played golf with him a few times.  His dad was a physicist who worked for NASA.  There were rocket scientists everywhere those days.

Twenty-two years after high school, I bought the house Eddie grew up in.  In addition to being a rocket scientist, his dad was a ham radio nut.  I pulled miles of cable out of the walls and had fun demolishing the remains of the radio tower.

To this day, I get letters addressed to Eddie from a law firm in Panama City.  I guess he never did pay for all of the damages.