This is my entry for LJ Idol, Three Strikes, for the prompt, "America."My maternal grandfather was 100 percent Polish, which is why I often have latched onto that ethnicity as identity, despite the fact that more than 50 percent of my heritage comes from the United Kingdom and Ireland. But when I tried to ask him about it, Pop-Pop wouldn't talk about his Polish blood, saying simply, "I'm an American."
Since then, I've learned that Pop-Pop was a master storyteller, carefully crafting a personal narrative that highlighted what he believed were his best traits. He was a proud man, strong and determined. But this meant he often downplayed his own personal shame. Not, however, if his sister had anything to do with it.
A truthteller by nature, she'd lived her own hard life, including losing triplet boys the day they were born, and surviving a marriage to an abusive alcoholic until his death at age 56. We knew her as Aunt Rage, not because of her outlook on life, which was more accepting and filled with a wry sense of humor, but because it was her nickname, from her birth name Regina.
In those days, I was still resisting my paternal grandmother's efforts to interest me in genealogy, but I was naturally fascinated by my Pop-Pop, the only person in my family who was 100 percent anything. Why wouldn't he talk about it, I wondered.
One sunny day in the 1990s, Aunt Rage visited my mother's home. By then, my Nana had died, and after spending several years alone, with some household help from Rage's son, Butch, Pop-Pop had made the practical choice and moved in with my Mom. Aunt Rage and Butch were the only members of Pop-Pop's side of the family I could remember meeting, and were often invited to family events. But this day stands out to me, because it's the one day I can remember seeing Aunt Rage in our own personal space.
Apparently, my mother also found the occasion momentous, because though she didn't often take photos of anything other than flowers or other nature scenes she wanted to paint, she commemorated it by taking a photo of the elderly siblings, sitting on a day bed in the living room.
At some point in that afternoon, I took advantage of some quiet time alone with Aunt Rage to ask her about some of the stories Pop-Pop liked to tell about his youth. One of them had to do with his nose.
Now, the Gwiazdowskis had a distinctive bulbous nose, wide with a rounded fleshy tip, recognizable as a family trait in the few pictures I've seen of Pop-Pop's family. But Pop-Pop's nose was wider: squashed at the bridge, the way a boxer's nose might look after being in numerous fights. To hear Pop-Pop tell it, that's precisely how his nose acquired that appearance. He told us that he got into a fight with somebody during the Prohibition era, who wanted him to drink some bathtub gin. Not only did Pop-Pop know that such homemade alcohol could be dangerous, but he also said he knew of some people who'd been blinded from it.
Pop-Pop also had an antipathy towards alcohol because of his father owning a saloon. This much I've been able to verify from city directories. The fact that his father's obituary makes no mention of that profession, calling him only a coal miner, I attribute to the fact that he died in 1932, a year before Prohibition was repealed. According to another member of that branch of the family, found recently through a DNA match, it was common in those days for people to run a speakeasy out of their legitimate businesses, selling alcohol under the counter.
So in Pop-Pop's story, he was standing up for himself. He was also taking a stance against a dangerous substance, homemade alcohol, in order to keep himself safe, perhaps a not-too-subtle lesson for his grandchildren to "just say no" in the face of temptation.
I asked Aunt Rage about how Pop-Pop's nose got broken, and she told me, simply, "He got stepped on by a horse." She didn't elaborate, and I didn't press for details, as I would have today. Her version, though, makes a lot of sense. Pop-Pop worked in the mines as a young man, and back then, coal carts were pulled by horses or ponies. Given the unsafe working conditions that caused serious injuries or deaths in many on my mother's side of the family, I can imagine numerous ways he could have found himself trampled in that humiliating way. No wonder he told a different story.
Only recently, I figured out the truth behind another story, a story that I wish my mother had heard while she was alive. I think it would have helped correct a lifelong feeling that she wasn't wanted. This is the story of how she got her name.
My mother was an only child in a family full of cousins, and there were good reasons for that. To start, my Nana spent her 20s caring for her younger siblings after her mother died and her father, who'd also been an alcoholic, had left the home to marry a widow who had six children of her own at home.
Pop-Pop and Nana had a true love story, the most adorable real-life meet-cute I've ever heard. He fell in love with her voice, having called up to ask the time from the telephone operator. In those days, a live person had to patch the call through, and sometimes served as an information directory, as well. He kept calling her for the time, just to hear her voice, until he had the nerve to ask to meet her.
Meeting in person, and liking what they both saw, they fell in love, taking long walks in the woods, where he took photos of the dark-haired woman he found so beautiful and charming. This much is true.
After marrying in their mid-30s, they tried to conceive a child, with little luck. My Nana had a "tilted uterus," I've been told, although I'm not sure exactly what that means. When she was in the hospital to give birth, the doctors decided on a Caesarean section, a relatively new procedure in American hospitals. The baby was healthy, but the procedure took a lot out of my Nana, and she was "at death's door," to hear my mother tell it. Words, I'm sure, she heard from Pop-Pop, who stayed at his wife's side around the clock.
Meantime, my Mom, a healthy, plump newborn, charmed the nurses with her bright blue eyes. One of them in particular formed a bond with her, and feeling sorry for the baby who lay nameless in the crib for days, she wrote a name on the card above her bassinet: "Vivian Irene."
Whether he considered it bad luck to change her name, or whether they had no female names picked, hoping for a boy, Pop-Pop used that name when registering for her birth certificate, a couple weeks later.
My mom would tell this story with a mix of wonder at the serendipitous bestowal of such a jewel of a name, and a sadness about her eyes at the fact that she was such an afterthought to the man she spent a lifetime trying to please. She was certain that, if her mother had named her, she would have been Hannah, a family name.
This version of the story may be true, but it leaves out a very important detail. At the time of my mother's birth, in late July 1943, Pop-Pop was waiting for a response from the court where he had applied for a name change, going from his birth name of Gwiazdowski to Starr. That application didn't go through until early August.
If Pop-Pop had given the hospital officials a name while in the hospital, my mother would have been Hannah Gwiazdowski, instead of a Starr. Then, he would likely have to go through the entire process for her, as well. Or she might have decided not to change it, and spent a lifetime carrying a name he didn't wish for her to have. Instead of dealing with the constant misspellings and mispronunciations, or the probable "pollock" jokes as soon as they heard her surname, she could sail through life with the sparkling name of Starr.
I think if she'd known, Mom would have realized that not naming her in the hospital was a misguided act of love, as well as yet another example of my grandfather's oversized pride. Whatever else it shows, it's yet another example of his determination to define himself on his own terms. Maybe, to him, that's what being an American meant.
Aunt Rage with Pop-Pop in about 1995
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