Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

On this, our first rainy day in Warsaw, I woke up, realizing that I brought neither raincoat nor umbrella with me to Poland. Likewise, Henry has no raincoat or galoshes. In America, when you’re merely dropping a child off at school, he can’t get that wet dashing from car seat into a warm building. Henry had always made it a virtue to be underprepared. He was a young tough: “I don’t need a coat,” he’d cavalierly say in 30-degree weather. But when you live car-free and walk ten minutes to the subway, stand outside for a tram connection, and then walk another five minutes to school, it’s hard to escape the elements. You’ll meet formidable puddles and be splashed by aggressive drivers. Even if you manage to stay dry, you can get wet when a fellow passenger on the tram brushes close.

Carelessness about one’s protection can cost you all day. You may have to contend with wet feet and damp pants. You may catch a cold. So I’ll have to add a raincoat for Henry to our growing list of purchases.

This morning, Malgosia, our landlady, who seems more like a hostess, offered us her selection of umbrellas, but they were all heavy and oversized, with the U-shaped wooden handles, not like the compact, lightweight (read: flimsy) models I’ve gotten used to in America. So before we set out on our travels today, I borrowed her lightest model (“feel free to lose it,” she said), and set out. Of course, Henry’s slip-on shoes were soaked by the time we got to school, and I felt badly that he didn’t have an extra pair of socks with him to pair with the extra shoes at school.

Taking public transportation — going car-free — provides a greater connection to the weather, forces you to be more conscious of your choices. This was part of my motivation to come to Poland. Coming to Poland wasn’t about making life easier, but just the reverse. It was about learning to live consciously. About learning from a culture not (yet) afflicted by affluenza, the American disease of too much. So here we are, learning to live consciously, learning by osmosis, learning by getting wet — behind the ears — and elsewhere.