{"id":283,"date":"2019-03-27T19:57:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T00:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xn--choodeccy-sub.org\/blog\/?p=283"},"modified":"2019-03-27T20:16:49","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T01:16:49","slug":"grandad-dostoyevsky-and-american-lawns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/xn--choodeccy-sub.org\/blog\/?p=283","title":{"rendered":"Grandad, Dostoyevsky and American Lawns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ma\u0142gorzata Cho\u0142odecka writes about her Grandfather Edmund Cho\u0142odecki<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Instead of\nreading Dostoyevsky as a cautionary tale, I gobbled him up, one sunrise at a\ntime. I grieved for a lost world and hoped that maybe I could somehow get\nteleported there. Russia was a place where cavalier men drank Vodka while\nteetering off of high ledges. Wow they knew how to party in the 1800\u2019s, I\nhowever was stuck in suburban America. Their word play, stolen glances and\ndouble meanings would never be mine to imbibe. I lived in a world of clear-cut\ndefinitions, rules and all sorts of no trespassing signs. It was hard for me to\nreconcile that I missed out on a time and place where people would have died\nfor poetry. I was born too late, communism eradicated that sort of life. I knew\nthat those people had gone with the Bolsheviks, their good manners and immense\nspontaneity lost in some Russian Gulag. His words spoke of them and of a place\nthat no longer was, his books a reflection of a lost landscape. As a teenager\nDostoyevsky provided me with a portal, through him I could peer through a\nclosed curtain and sit on a train next to a well-dressed stranger. It was all\nso bad, dark, and glamorous. My life paled in comparison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up in a\nvery typical American Suburb. There were homes, green grass and trees in the\nbackyard. I don\u2019t ever remember using our front lawn or our back yard. My\nparents threw a lot of parties so that is not to say that our backyard patio\nwasn\u2019t used for anything, to me however it always felt very still, and lifeless\nno matter how many trees swayed outside my window. The street, the homes felt\nhollow and empty. I couldn\u2019t have put into words back then, but what was\nmissing was the human factor. No one on our street really knew one another,\nthere was nothing connecting these homes other then their borderless lawns that\nspilled from one neighbour\u2019s house into the next. It wasn\u2019t a community if lack\nfor a better word but rather a conglomeration of random people that chose to\nlive on that street with nothing else binding them. And then there was us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Edmund is third from right<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

We would\nperpetually get hit up with fines for trying to grow grapevines, tomatoes and\ndandelions. My dad forbid us to spray our lawn, he looked at me crunched his\nlips into a little beak and said you know that anything you put in there will\nend up in our drinking water. I remember my walks of shame every time I got off\nthe bus, immaculate lawns to my left, immaculate lawns to my right and those\nbright yellow spots in the distance my house. I didn\u2019t need to look up I could\nhave just looked at the grass to find my way home. My dad insisted that he\ndidn\u2019t understand what the fuss was about, they are just nice yellow flowers\nwhy is everyone so adamant about destroying them. But at the time this was\npretty much sacrilegious. America was in midst of a full-on dandelion\ninoculation. If there was an agent that would had gotten rid of those resistant\nlittle buggers, they would have detonated it. And here we were these garlic\nsmelling Poles that always spoke out of turn and cultivated these things like a\ncrop of sorts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember a\npolice car pulling up to our house one time. The policemen stepped out all\nuncomfortable like and explained to us that this was not designated farm land\nand that our neighbours were uncomfortable with our front lawn farming\noperation. My dad had converted our house into a radio of sorts, but we were\nnot farming. The Policeman pointed to our rows of grape vines, \u201cyou see this,\nthis is a crop you can\u2019t grow crops here.\u201d My dad insisted that they were\ndecorative, that we weren\u2019t bottling wine or making grape jam in our basement.\nHe looked at the Police man shoulders slouched \u201cyou see\u201d he pointed at the\nground most of them fall off. \u201cWe just like the look of it, kind of like a\nlittle Italy\u201d he finished with his endearing smile. Yes, the Policeman\ncontinued but your neighbors think that you are farming, and this is not Italy\nits America. There are certain codes here that all our citizens must follow. My\ndad nodded his head that he understood. The policemen stepped back into his\nvehicle pulled out and that was that. The fines kept on coming in their long\nwhite envelopes, and I guess we kept on farming because the grapes stayed, who\nknows they might be there till this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Edmund is third from left
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My Grandfather\nhad planted grapes and so grapes ran deep in our psyche, it would have equated\nto pulling Grandad out of the ground. My dad might have been at odds with his\nown father, maybe they didn\u2019t see eye to eye on most things, but my Grandad\nplanted a lot of stuff in his life time, even built a greenhouse of sorts to\nhouse it all. When I was little Grandad would take me by the hand and walk me\nover to his plants and tell me to breath in the aroma. Afterwards he\u2019d look\ndown into my face searching for something. I think he wanted an affirmation of\nsorts. I did smell them, all his plants but it was also very sticky and humid\nin there, so I probably lost interest rather quickly and wanted to get out.\nHe\u2019d resist my flight with one look of his big brown eyes, that knew how to\ntear up in a guilt inducing instant. I wouldn\u2019t do that to him I\u2019d stay and\nwater the plants with him. As a token of his appreciation his big lips would\nburst into the most welcoming of smiles and he would continue on to show off\nthe new shoots poking through the ground. His wide nose inhaling everything\naround him, he related to his tomatoes as though they were his friends or long\nlost relatives, it was either all accolades or cuss words if they were not up\nto par. There was a lot of love in that green house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grandad also had bee hives, out in his back yard, I never cared for the bees that much, they got stuck inside the house a lot, or ended up in my little cement pool that he had built me. Regardless whether I appreciate it or not as a child it infused me. The smell of bee\u2019s wax and honey will forever be intertwined with my Grandad. If ever I want to conjure up the past all I have to do is run my fingers over a stem of a tomato plant or light a bee\u2019s wax candle and there he is. Our house in the States was devoid of aromas, there was no ram shamble green house to venture into, nor stores of honey and bees wax lying around. I think we all missed it, my dad must have missed it so much that it propelled him to cultivate his own bees and he now climbs the rooftop of his little hotel to have his own session with Grandad, maybe the honey is his way back home too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ma\u0142gorzata Cho\u0142odecka writes about her Grandfather Edmund Cho\u0142odecki Instead of reading Dostoyevsky as a cautionary tale, I gobbled him up, one sunrise at a time. I grieved for a lost world and hoped that maybe I could somehow get teleported there. Russia was a place where cavalier men drank Vodka while teetering off of high […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/xn--choodeccy-sub.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/xn--choodeccy-sub.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/xn--choodeccy-sub.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xn--choodeccy-sub.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xn--choodeccy-sub.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/xn--choodeccy-sub.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"http:\/\/xn--choodeccy-sub.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/xn--choodeccy-sub.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xn--choodeccy-sub.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xn--choodeccy-sub.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}