Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Resistance Fighters I Have Known (or, What I Learned About Myself in 2010)

I recently met a lady who was a Warsaw Uprising Polish Resistance fighter who was thrown into a POW camp in WWII for throwing Molotov Cocktails at the Nazi's. Good for her! I was actually at the symphony with my son when we met her, and her story came to me through her daughter, after the woman gave my son her 50th year commemorative pin as a gift.

I'd taken my son there because they had the national folk dance troupe of Poland dancing there and I wanted to expose my son to more of one aspect of our multiple heritages. Little did I know that he'd be sitting next to a national living treasure of Poland and impress her so with his listening abilities that she'd gift him something that important.

Many of the people in attendance were Polish...like from Poland, or first generation here. All of them would ask my son "You Polish?" with a hopeful look in their eye and when he would say "Yes" in his American accent, they'd look to me and say "Ah, your mother, she's from Poland!" I'd explain that I'm 5th generation here and he's 6th generation here. I was actually quite proud of myself for remembering how to say "Thank you!" in Polish and knowing the towns we came from in Poland, thanks to my genealogy research.

The irony of me encountering possibly the only Resistance fighter in the crowd was not lost on me. On my Irish side, while we've got no claim to activism in Ireland, we still hold fast to the idea that Northern Ireland is still occupied by the invaders and still hope for freedom someday. My son still refers to himself as Cherokee and the invaders as "Americans." We've got something going on all sides of our heritages, it seems.

So I go to watch the beautiful dancing and listen to the songs, and get this really alluring visual of this dear, sweet elder lobbing off Molotov Cocktails in the general direction of some pretty nasty people. Rock on!

I don't think that I can discuss what I learned about myself this past year without referencing my heritage or ancestors. There's so much of us that lays dormant until a good storm comes to knock everything about and unearths the gifts of our lineage. That's what happened to me. I discovered some things about myself I might not have, were it not for the challenge presented by this year. I've learned that I'm like my father in regard to seeing something through no matter how painful the process. I'm like my mother in her ability to move forward without holding onto resentments or regrets.

I can't say how far many of our attributes go back. In watching the dancers, I saw the beautiful women and the fearless men and the ways in which they balanced and supported one another. Four generations after my family left Poland, my mother used the same template for success in a marriage that ultimately failed. I had a new insight into the decision making that led her down the path that it did. She was only following along with what the culture prescribed and in her case, it failed her. She was the ultimate in beauty for her day, and my father was the ultimate in fearlessness. Their dance became one that was toxic until it finally ended.

As for me, I think that I viewed whatever she did and tried to do the opposite in order to learn from her mistakes. Then, many years later, I see the dancers and think, how beautiful! How wonderful! And just when the metaphor for the ideal relationship might pull me in, voila, a Resistance Fighter pops up.

If nothing else, I've learned the value of being a modern day Resistance Fighter in my own life over this past year. I've learned the importance of knowing what you're fighting to maintain. In times of great abundance, we truly do not know what to value, we're so dazzled by it all. In times of great suffering, we know it all too well and we know what is worth fighting for.

Lord knows what a 16 year old girl was subjected to in a POW camp of the Nazi's. She told my son, "Whatever you do in life, ENJOY LIFE." I've learned in my own process of this year to take the blessings where and when they come. I've come to recognize the need to cull back the accumulation of what I thought was abundance but was really distraction. I've laughed harder and in a more authentic way this year than ever before. I've recognized that the greatest injustices we have done to us are those we would do to ourselves at times, for accepting the unacceptable, selling ourselves short, or even allowing for a moment someone else's negativity and attitude problem to define our experience.

Year's still got another month to go, so who all knows what else I'll discover, but you can be sure I'll enjoy life doing it.