“Babcia” by Maria Krol-Sinclair
He sits on a chair
asleep
feeding his feet to
the fire
ears gently infected
Disease is both treatable and known.
But no medicine.
1959
In the thin-wombed world
Fever breaking the fence posts of my four year old father
Ecstatically; crackingly
splitting out and in.
The priest came for my father
climbed the fourteen steep balcons
to bless him cooly.
My Babcia, a
young Babcia,
sobbing quietly in the bathtub
missed her
child,
teen,
adult son
before he could begin.
My great grandma
Julia
placed heavily herbed lancets
on my father’s ear lobes
Let him out if he wished.
Everyone else bent on
preserving my father
Babcia Julia, wiser;
instead, cut
knowingly, sighingly,
wishingly,
craftily;
in the shadow of his last days,
a curl of his hair.
Above his right ear,
spread it into a pot,
asked for Someone to take it
knew that this was what
Someone, that Someone
would want.
This was no begging scenario
but a trade.
Babcia Julia,
when everyone else left defeated,
cut a hair from my father and
made the exchange.
“I lived”
says my father
in telling and re-telling
cups his two hands and
rises
gently out of his chair
“Well, ninety-five percent”
he says chuckling, softly,
pulls unconsciously, almost at his right ear…
where Babcia Julia had whispered
“You have to share willingly. What you’ve
chosen to give to me
is now mine; you’ve given me this gift;
nod, if you understand, and wish to give it.”
And
when he nodded, cut firmly,
My Babcia Julia
a lock of his hair.
Creative? Essential.
Whether magic or miracle
My father, just four, now enticed
to
alight
to the world of the living.
Babcia Julia the healer
showed him that to live, you must
give of yourself first
honest parts of you fully; and
all of the time.
My ancestors knew.
That to give of yourself
was the best way, the only way, perhaps,
to survive.
____________________
Share your response to this work, in any form, here
Maria Krol-Sinclair Artist Statement:
I’m Polish American and live with PTSD. I love languages and graduated with a BA in Modern Languages. I speak Spanish, Mandarin, and Polish. I grew up in many haunted places – mainly former Soviet/Nazi occupied Poland, and Chelsea, a community of immigrants in Boston. Naturally, I believe in ghosts.
