A bit of Magic from My Grandfather...

My Lithuanian grandparents were interesting folks....my grandmother Minnie came from a line of midwives and although she did not become a midwife in America....she continued to be a healer and medicine woman.

Minnie had hundreds of clean baby jars in her pantry with all types of seeds and dried leaves...she collected these herbs/leaves from the Forest Preserves in Chicago. High blood pressure ...no problem....a few leaves brewed into a tea calmed your vessels down. Too many children? A concoction of herbs seeped in hot water....stopped the babies from coming.

A small spit of a woman....she made me laugh and gave me a shot of whiskey each time I visited her because of my chronically pale cheeks....which she worried about. "You so pale," she would half shout at me when I entered her apartment....then she'd slap my cheeks, sit me down and give me a shot of "medicine."

My cheeks flamed and my grandmother was pleased.

I never thought of my grandfather being magical....he was a quiet man....a talented musician who played the accordion and wrote his own music....plus he worked as carpenter and furniture maker. But little by little....as I go through my grandfather's things that I inherited from my father....I realize George had a bit of magic in him too.

Yesterday I opened a box from my dad's house and discovered a small home made wooden box nestled inside...and inside that box.....a worn leather case, much like a small envelope, with something in it.

When I opened ...I first thought ...oh it's a deck of cards. But the double images on each card made me pause....a King of Hearts with two people shaking hands underneath? An 8 of Clubs with a snake?

Then I started reading the cards and realized they were Tarot cards. I've never seen a deck like this....one that is half playing card and half fortune-telling. After reading many of the cards, I discovered it was a complicated system...the cards you picked from the deck were important....but where you placed the card (closer or farther away from you on the table) and the sequence of cards you picked....could change your fortune.

In the cards above....the 8 of Clubs was not good news...it meant trouble was on it's way....and if you placed the card closer to you when you selected it .....lots of trouble was coming.....placing it farther away from you on the table...meant less trouble.

My dad told me my grandfather dabbled in fortune telling.....that he read cards and tea leaves...but I thought he made up these interesting stories to amuse me... especially since I'd never seen any proof of this activity.

George, my grandfather, was a quiet thoughtful man....always memorizing historical facts or dabbling in mathematics ....or working with or on his carpentry tools. He made jewelry out of amber and small mirrored beads in his spare time. He was a busy guy and seemed so logical and detail oriented... it's hard for me to imagine him dabbling with a deck of Tarot cards.

On the other hand....maybe he was just the type....the quiet scholar.....the occasional barber and handyman....who might offer you a cup of tea and listen to you talk....then quietly suggest perhaps a look into the future would be helpful??....carefully observing how you held your cards...how you placed them on the table....seeing which cards you placed close to your body or closer to him...noticing if cards touched each other or where far apart.

So there's my grandma....dealing out herbs and ointments to help your aches and pains and desires from her pantry and there's my grandfather....sitting at the kitchen table.....helping you see the future....suggesting more good deeds or more caution....or a more courageous stance in life.

Amazing.

George died when I was in third grade....so I don't have many clear memories about him....but how interesting that decades after his death....I rediscover him....in his carpentry work ( I have saved most of his tools, hand made boxes, furniture and some jewelry)...and in his Tarot cards.

Perhaps this was all meant to be.....perhaps one day he dealt out a row of cards for himself....and smiled.....realizing I would find all of this one day....encouraging my dad....to bundle and wrap and save all things..... for me....and through me into someone else in the future.

Which card told you that Grandpa?

The mystery gets bigger

My grandfather was always a puzzle to me......aloof.....stoic.....not an easy man.

He came to the United States around 1916 in the great immigration wave from Eastern Europe and shorty after arriving married my grandmother who was, supposedly, some distant cousin.

My grandparents never liked to talk about the "old country" a lot......and this was especially true of my grandfather. I didn't know if he had any brothers or sisters in this country. I wasn't sure what town he came from....I never heard any childhood stories about him or from him.

My grandfather received letters from Poland from his family and relatives....but my grandmother and my mother paid me 50 cents to intercept them....to beat my grandfather to the mailbox and secret them away. They always told me his relatives wanted money from him so they "screened" his mail. They said he received all of his screened mail after they read it. The answer seemed plausible when I was kid and two quarters could buy candy or a Good Humor Ice Cream bar from the truck so I wasn't going to complain about my little job.

Once or twice I caught my grandmother burning letters in a steel bowl in the backyard....but she told me she was burning her letters from her family....although in retrospect..... it was probably my grandfather's "screened" letters that were turned to ashes.

When my parents died...and I went through their papers and house, I expected to find something about my grandparents...and I actually hoped I would find something about my mysterious grandfather. But the steel box that kept my parents' important papers contained nothing about my grandparents or my grandfather. The only other boxes that contained papers...... were my mother's "tax boxes." I thought of throwing the tax boxes away but decided to bring them back home with me and go through them in case there was something I might need to settle their taxes or estate.

My mother was compulsive about keeping her receipts organized in the tax box.

Each box has a year scrawled on it....and each box contains every cancelled check my mother wrote for the year, every utility and phone bill, every bill.....and once charge cards became popular....my mother would staple every receipt to match the charges onto the bill...and then fold the bill in half and staple again...sort of like a little paper dumpling with bills inside.

If there was ever a question on a bill or she wanted to check something like a credit card receipt from 4 years ago....all she had to do was pull out the appropriate tax box and viola the original receipt and the charge statement would all be there.

I will not even discuss what I do in contrast....except to say it's more like "ha ha good luck" or something akin to the lottery.

Despite this uber organization......my mother and sometimes my father..... would throw something very personal in a tax box.....sometimes unrelated to the year of the box and the event.

For example, I looked through a 1995 box and discovered amid all the perfect stacks of rubber banded receipts....a lone 5x7 white envelope....I looked inside and there was my parent's wedding invitation...an invitation I have never seen.

Because of these odd strange personal items in the boxes.....I decided not to toss the tax year boxes away......and carted about 35 boxes home.....35 tax years. I've been trying to tackle one a week....just going through them.....placing some paper in recycling and the rest through the shredder.

Yesterday.....I opened a box from the 70's and right up on top was a very yellowed piece of paper. I held my breath.....it was in Polish......and had official stamps on it.

My grandfather's birth certificate. HOLY SHIT.

Finally....finally I was going to find out where he is from and at the very least who were his parents. I carefully ....oh so carefully opened....the fragile thin paper and then looked back into the box...something was missing.....a quarter of the paper.

I carefully laid the delicate paper out on my kitchen counter and realized someone had cut....a nice clean straight edge across the certificate....and removed my grandfather's father name and where he came from.

The upper corner lists my grandfather's province, municipality and parish (all government business in the 1800's was anchored by which parish served a community).

It appears his mother's name was listed....which may be Anita? The year he was born is clearly listed......but for some reason.....his father's name was removed.

My first cousin told me...... her parents, (my aunt and uncle) actually visited Poland and visited my grandfather's town. But they wouldn't talk about it, took no pictures and gave no records to her.

She told me....my grandfather was Jewish....or probably was Jewish....but it remains a mystery....he certainly married into a Catholic family.....and he avoided church like the plague.... but men from the old country especially..,,, older men...often didn't attend church....since religion was considered "women's business."

Last night I was thrilled....and spent a couple hours trying decipher the letters then put the words into an online translator.

Today....I am scratching my head....why did my mom want to hide this info? Why was my great grandfather's name such a secret?.....even if the man was a notorious horse thief or bank robber....looking at a birth certificate and seeing the name John Bar....k....isn't going to tell you much about his old country history when you're standing in America.

And if this was really such a big secret....why cut out a portion of the birth certificate ? Why not just throw it away?

With the municipality, parish, and local government listed on the document.... there is a reasonable chance I can get another copy or trace it.....I may not...but the three things you need to do a search of Polish records is the governmental logistics..... which is in the corner of the document.

What an interesting and strange little mystery this is......who was my great grandfather....who were my grandfather's relatives?.....and why would you want to cover the information up?

Guess I better get onto to one of those family ancestry websites......and find a Polish translator. This might be fun and interesting.........