National Identity – My Journey from Poland to Australia

Unfinished - needs more editing

As a woman that migrated to Australia from Poland as a child with my parents and sister, I still face the issue at times, of struggling with national identity. While ANZAC day was being celebrated yesterday, I found myself as usual unable to connect with the feelings that perhaps those that consider themselves ‘true blue aussies’ are able to connect with. While I hold no disrespect to the soldiers that have sacrificed their lives to keep this country safe, and I have called this country my home for over 25 years now, it got me thinking after a conversation with an Australian friend why it is that I cannot connect with this country’s past: perhaps it being that it was not my family or ancestors that lived through those times. These are just feelings and thoughts I am trying to explore. Can we love two countries or hold both national identities in our hearts? Yes I guess we can, and we will love each country differently and identify and connect with each of its components differently.

Coming to Australia

Though I have not been back to Poland since I left in March 1992, for various reasons I won’t go into here, I still hold many memories dearly in my heart and speak the language almost daily. Although I left when I was seven years old and I did not finish grade zero over there (equivalent to kindergarten in Australia I assume), I had a little home schooling in Polish that started in Australia, thanks to the wonderful book Elementarz. Thanks to my parents and especially my mum’s tutoring, I grew up speaking Polish fairly fluently and being able to read and write basic Polish, though not entirely grammatically correct. Through my increasingly growing and encouraged interest in reading, in my late primary school years, I found myself quickly advancing in my grasp of the English language, including a growing interest in writing poetry over the years, while my Polish stalled out of lack of interest and laziness.

Having grown up around the Liverpool area, south west Sydney, I was also lucky enough to be able to access a Polish continental deli/s for those 15 years, which meant access to lots of beautiful, tasty Polish food, teas and sweets, as well access to Polish restaurants all around Sydney. There was even a Polish book shop in Liverpool, a Polish language section in the Liverpool City Library, a Polish librarian or two, a Polish session in the local Catholic church (not that I subscribed to any religion after the age of 9) and many Polish doctors scattered across the many Sydney suburbs. I’m not sure if I realised at the time how lucky I was to be surrounded by those Polish elements until I moved away to the Gold Coast and found nothing Polish in sight, at least at first. Don’t get me wrong, I am not exactly attached to Polish culture in terms of the music, movies, or literature, as these are not things I grew up around, but there are the aspects of food and language that have played the biggest part in my upbringing. And perhaps I never even considered the aspect of national identity until I moved away to the Gold Coast, as up until then I was just another migrant with migrant parents, speaking another language at home and eating amongst other nationality’s food, Polish food at home. It is not perhaps until you are surrounded by so many people that have a very different non migrant background to you, either the locals, other ‘true blue aussies’ or temporary tourists, that you remember what felt like home and ‘the norm’ in Sydney. Though Gold Coast is a fairly transient town or city (depending on whether you see its size as a real city) and so there are many people not from here, there is still an element of feeling like ‘the other’, due to not belonging to the aforementioned main categories of people here.

What I still remember

You may not think a 7 year old might remember much, but my mind is flooded with memories and images. Though I do not remember what snow felt like anymore, having last seen it in the Blue Mountains  in 1996, I can remember faintly, my plastic and wooden and metal toboggans, and sliding down heels. I can remember picking those light cherries (unlike the commonly seen ‘dark’ cherries in Australia) of a tree and mini apples, and parks strewn with chestnuts. In fact every time I smell some malina (raspberry), wiśnia (sour/dark cherry), dill pickles or dill, I am reminded of some aspect of Poland. I was born in Mokotów, Warsaw, so I lived a short bus ride away from Łazienki (Botanical Gardens) and Stare Miasto (Old Town) in Warsaw, so my memories are littered with images of horses and carriages, a huge glass house and plants growing outside in the Botanical Gardens being protected from the winter frost to get through the winter months. I can still remember images of black statues in the botanical gardens of lions and the vibrant colours of Spring that re-appeared once life woke up after winter. Poland will always symbolise warmth, both physical (inside a heated home) and emotional, family love, heavy food and hot teas, and remind me of simpler times as a child, before I knew of another world and language. I will always have those memories of the house sometimes being full of guests (or what seemed like it), though we lived in a pretty small apartment on the 10^th floor, and of having a godmother who always brought me gifts.

Where to from now

Perhaps as I get older, I will need to dig deeper into my roots a little more and connect with those parts my soul seems to miss more with age. Due to my mum’s exposure, I found myself listening to Chopin, only very occasionally, in the last few years, and found myself being able to connect with what I found to be both melancholic and beautiful music. Which brought me to some questions I haven’t yet found answered, maybe for lack of trying, maybe for lack of researching, whether it was quite natural to feel more naturally melancholic, passionate, poetic, deep thinking, reflective, quick to debate and defend and fight for justice due to having that Polish blood firing through my loins. As a natural therapist once said to me, our ancestors’ experiences can affect our genetics, and therefore our thoughts, emotions and reactions to the present day’s experiences and challenges can be different, compared to someone else with an entirely different ancestral past, meaning, I may or will react differently to life having had a Polish ancestral history running through me. How it affects us all? Only more research or personal experiences may be able to tell, and everyone will be different depending on how closely their family was affected by certain events or traumas. For now I may stick to my theory, that I am just that bit (or a lot) more fiery than the average aussie because I am a passionate Pole deep down.

 

Author's Note

This is unfinished, but I got a little impatient to post it now. I will make more edits to it.