{"id":2198,"date":"2008-01-31T00:01:37","date_gmt":"2008-01-31T07:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/31\/dinner-with-my-grandparents\/"},"modified":"2008-01-31T00:01:37","modified_gmt":"2008-01-31T07:01:37","slug":"dinner-with-my-grandparents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/2198","title":{"rendered":"Dinner with My Grandparents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My paternal grandfather, Micha\u0142 Da\u0144ko, died in 1953. I never met him\u00c2\u00a0because he died before I was born. His wife, Marianna Dziurzy\u0144ska, died in 1969. We called her &#8220;Nanny&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>My maternal grandfather, Konstanty Niedzia\u0142kowski, died in 1978. We called him &#8220;Pa&#8221;. His wife, Helena Chmielewska, died in 1980. We called her &#8220;Ma&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>All were gone before I asked any of them a single question about their lives.<\/p>\n<p>So, I&#8217;m inviting them all over for dinner. Nothing fancy. Perhaps a little kie\u0142basa,\u00a0some pierogi, and maybe even\u00c2\u00a0a few\u00c2\u00a0go\u0142\u0105bki if I can find the time to make them.<\/p>\n<p>I have my questions ready for them. I&#8217;ll try not to get too personal, and I suspect Ma will just answer all the questions with &#8220;What do you want to know that for? The past is dead!&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><strong>Growing Up<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Where were you born? What\u00c2\u00a0was the countryside around your home like?<\/li>\n<li>Who were your parents? What did they look like?<\/li>\n<li>Who were your brothers and sisters? What were they like?<\/li>\n<li>What did your\u00c2\u00a0family do for entertainment?\u00c2\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Where did you go to school? How many years of\u00c2\u00a0education did you receive?<\/li>\n<li>What games did you play when you were young?<\/li>\n<li>Did you work when you were young? What chores did you have?<\/li>\n<li>Where did you go to church? What was the church like? How did you feel about God?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"center\"><strong>Coming to America<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Why did you decide to come to America? How did you arrange your trip?<\/li>\n<li>How did you get from your home to the ship? What was the voyage like?<\/li>\n<li>What do you remember about Ellis Island?<\/li>\n<li>Where did you stay when you first arrived in America?<\/li>\n<li>Why did you settle in Worcester, Massachusetts?<\/li>\n<li>Did you have any friends or relatives in America when you immigrated? Did any friends or relatives come to America after you?<\/li>\n<li>Did you keep in touch with any family members after you arrived in America?<\/li>\n<li>In what social activities did you participate in America? Did you belong to any Polish groups?<\/li>\n<li>Was life in America what you thought it would be? Are you glad you came to this country?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"center\"><strong>Getting Married and Raising Children<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How did you meet your spouse? Tell me about the marriage proposal.<\/li>\n<li>Tell me about the births of your children. Were you ready to become parents when your first child was born?<\/li>\n<li>Did\u00c2\u00a0any of your children have any special talents? Were any of them troublemakers?<\/li>\n<li>Where did your children attend school?<\/li>\n<li>Where did you go to church? Were you active in any church groups?<\/li>\n<li>Where did you live in Worcester? What were these houses like?<\/li>\n<li>Where did you work? What were working conditions like? How much were you paid?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"center\"><strong>The World Wars<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\">What thoughts went through your minds when World War I broke out? What about World War II?<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\">Did you worry about your family back home? Did you hear anything about them during the wars?<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\">How did you feel about your sons going to fight in World War II? What did your sons think about going to fight in the war?<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\">Did you celebrate when the wars ended? How did you celebrate?<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"left\">That&#8217;s probably more than enough for one evening.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">After dinner, Pa will light up a cigar and relax. Ma will\u00c2\u00a0go to\u00c2\u00a0the kitchen, wash the dishes, and\u00c2\u00a0hum cheerfully as she does so. Nanny Da\u0144ko will probably sit down and enjoy watching <em>Animal Planet<\/em> or <em>Dancing with the Stars<\/em> on TV .\u00a0I&#8217;m not sure what Grandfather Da\u0144ko\u00c2\u00a0will want\u00c2\u00a0to do.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">And, as they leave at the end of the evening, Nanny Da\u0144ko will slip me a freshly washed and ironed one-dollar-bill. She always\u00c2\u00a0disliked dirty money.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Copyright \u00a9 2008 by Stephen J. Danko<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My paternal grandfather, Micha\u0142 Da\u0144ko, died in 1953. I never met him\u00c2\u00a0because he died before I was born. His wife, Marianna Dziurzy\u0144ska, died in 1969. We called her &#8220;Nanny&#8221;. My maternal grandfather, Konstanty Niedzia\u0142kowski, died in 1978. We called him &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/2198\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,27,30,35,100],"tags":[172],"class_list":["post-2198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chmielewskimeleski","category-daily-journal","category-danko","category-dziurzynski","category-niedzialkowski","tag-carnival-of-genealogy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pyBfX-zs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephendanko.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}