Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Friday, November 14, 2008

I am my father’s daughter. Never do I feel this so strongly as when I travel. Just this Wednesday, I returned from a seven-day trip to Washington DC and New York City, with Daddy — gone 12 years now — very much on my mind. In his youth in Poland in the 1930s, Edmund Urbanski longed to see the world. It wouldn’t surprise me if he entered the field of journalism in part to indulge his love of travel. Not surprisingly, he ended up in the Polish port city of Gdynia where, with one foot in the Baltic, he edited a maritime magazine. No doubt, his travel bug saved his life. In the summer of 1939 when his country was invaded by the Nazis, his name turned up on a Nazi list. When the officers came for him, he wasn’t home. He was in Sweden.

But I digress. My travels have never reached the dramatic, high-adrenalin, flight-for-your-life heights that Daddy experienced. My travels have never presented me scenes worthy of “Casablanca.” I’ve had a few adventures but, by and large, my trips have been safer and more predictable. But I like to think that I’ve taken my father’s spirit of openness and possibility, of curiousity with me wherever I go. I like to think that when I meet someone new, I get to touch just a piece of that person and leave a piece of myself behind.

This past week, I put together a busy travel schedule, pointing my Prius to Washington, DC and later hopping a train to New York City. I met many fascinating folks along the way and had the opportunity to mingle with old friends and encounter new ones. The highlight for me was last Friday when I attended a day-long briefing from professors at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC, a high-minded graduate school of statecraft, national security and international affairs. It was capped off by the late-afternoon inauguration of the Kosciuszko Chair of Polish Studies at the Institute, so eloquently presented by the larger-than-life founder and visionary Dr. John Lenczowski.

My sister Jane and our niece Tina Tuliszka turned up for the grand finale and the reception that followed. What a crowd in which to mingle. You heard more Polish than English bouncing off the mahogany-paneled walls. Each person there seemed to have traveled the world, each having worked in ways large and small to reshape it. Jane and I bumped into our old friend Tadeusz Piotrowski, a professor and scholar from New Hampshire, who made a special trip to come to see his friend Marek Jan Chodakiewicz assume the chair. We ran into the Korzan brothers, Slawomir and Roman, whom our father had taken underwing when they were newcomers in America. “Your father would tell us about history, the way events actually happened, things we never learned under the Communists,” Roman told me, still deeply appreciative.

One practical piece of my father’s travel wisdom that stays with me is to put your money into your food — not your quarters. He was a locavore before the term was invented. So when I left the hospitable homes of my sister and cousins, and headed to New York City, whenever I can, I check into the Leo House. Located in Chelsea, it’s a moderately priced, quiet, Catholic hospice, run by the Sisters of St. Agnes. It houses a chapel with frequent (if not daily) mass and offers home-prepared, buffet-style breakfasts six days a week. I have been a visitor for decades now (having learned about the place from — you guessed it — Dad). Like me, the Leo House is a late adapter of new technologies. Only in the past few years did it dispense with its human-run elevator in favor of a self-serve model. To this day, the place remains Internet-free. All reservations must be booked via telephone or fax. And you can’t hook up a laptop there, either. (Good thing I didn’t bring mine.)

On my last day in New York, before heading off to my final meeting, I met a woman who was staying on my floor. We stepped into the breakfast room at the same time and introduced ourselves. The woman was a writer, from Afghanistan, named Farida Nekzad, who had come to this country to accept a prestigious “Courage in Journalism” award from the International Women’s Media Foundation. Farida and I got to talking about her flight from her country — where fellow female journalists are killed for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, for just being female. She related her travel ordeal of collapsing when she arrived in the US, having suffered days-long airport delays and visa screw-ups. She was given immediate medical attention. The doctor tested her and told her — much to her delight and surprise — that yes she was sick but she was also pregnant. Farida talked about her work and her innate curiosity, and the dangers of being Afghanistani. I asked her what struck her about America. She said that Americans were “so kind.” It occurred to me that once she returned home, any day might be her last.

I came back to my simple life in Mount Airy with a fresh dose of the larger world, glad that I opened myself to what was around me and carrying the hope that I had left a small piece of myself behind, as Daddy has.