Re-discovering pleasure of reading

I have been home bound for some days. This temporarily changed my lifestyle and I re-discovered reading for pleasure. Being an achievement oriented person I typically read books not that much for fun but to get new skills, learn more. This has been fine but reading for pleasure of reading is great. In my earlier years I loved reading, it may have been some form of escape for me. Maybe reading is usually a form of escape from our everyday lives? It also stimulates our imagination, brings new observations, new wisdom.

As for ten years I was the only child and I was not allowed to play with kids in a communistic, industrial, small town yard, I was finding my friends in books.  I started to read early and my favourite were stories about boarding schools for girls. My mother must have bought them for me in a second hand book shop as my childhood years were communistic times in Poland. The literature of the times had to glorify the working class not boarding schools for girls from higher social classes.   

No wonder that reading recently Charlotte Bronte’s - Villette I re-discovered moods of my childhood and that gave me additional pleasure in reading the book.

          

Villette is about life in pennsionat – boarding school of Madam Beck. I was lucky to be able to buy a beautiful edition of all the novels of  the three Bronte sisters with great wood engravings by Peter Reddick. I am making my way though the set of the seven novels and Villette is my favourite so far. Boarding schools were a favourite location of the novels of Charlotte Bronte, so it is not surprising that I particularly like writing of this sister.

Charlotte Bronte

The story is about Lucy Snowe, an orphan who does not have any family and for a short while has to go through life with help of her godmother but soon she is left to her own devices.  She is a determined teenage girl when the story starts who has little money but enough to help her to get to Villette – Brussels where the main story takes place. The plot is not very convincing or realistic, but this does not matter much. There are compensations! The story is an excuse to write about subjects that must have been important and close to the heart of Charlotte, and perhaps the other sisters as well – working women in the XIXth century, their independence,  loneliness, spirituality and life styles of England and Europe. The currency of the issues discussed at length by Charlotte Bronte is amazing. She writes about issues that are still important, need attention and hopefully improvement. Or maybe they are just issues that are not resolvable and this is the reason why the book is so relevant also in the current times.

Some of my friends describe me as European. I am not sure if this is a plus or a minus but the fact is that some of my behaviours and reactions are not of an Anglo-Saxon nature. I call myself an Aussie with a strange accent but there must be a lot of European left in me that I am not aware of. Charlotte Bronte who for some time lived in Brussels was aware of the differences in behaviours of English and Belgian or generally European people.  The differences, in her experience, were not in plus for Europe. She sees Europeans as skimming, not trustworthy, fickle, flirty, generally without much substance. She noticed that there are exceptions, thanks God.

The subject of religion is a strong point of the novel. Bronte is a spiritual person but she  declares that “God is not with Rome”. I may agree with this statement but it is a subject for another post.  

About my grandfather

I have enjoyed going back in my thoughts to my childhood. I started to remember more and more. When I stop and travel in time, I remember smells, colours, temperature of the air. This is a really nice feeling. Typically for most of us some childhood events turned into psychological hang-ups and complexes. Thinking back helps me to understand myself better and some of the memories are really nice to think about. I particularly like to think about my grandfather. I was once asked when did I first feel loved. My grandpa came to mind immediately. He was a very special man. At least I think so. I need to find out from the only surviving person, who may know about it, what actually was the war he fought in and was declared a hero. For now I believe that it must have been Polish Soviet war of 1919-1921. My grandfather came out of the war in one piece but with very impaired hearing. He met my grandmother at a ball organised by one of the most known and prominent Lithuanian- Polish families Radziwill. My grandmother ran the school for children of people working for the Radziwill family.  She was at the Radziwill ball where my grandfather noticed her as a very attractive young woman. He tried to dance with her but she hesitated to accept him as a dance partner because of his problems with hearing. Not very noble of her. The countess Radziwill noticed the situation and called my grandma to tell the silly girl that she had refused to dance with a war hero who had been fighting for Poland  and had lost his hearing protecting the country and that everybody owes him respect and admiration. It must have been a convincing speech and a memorable dance that followed the rebuke as they married soon after the ball. 

The war pictures of the times do not shake of scare us much. Have we gone too far in sophistication and science of wars?

                                

I am not sure if my grandma always treated her hero with due respect as she was a bossy person and this is how I remember her. She bossed my grandpa around and he never protested or argued with her. This does not mean he was a push over. Not at all. He did what he wanted to do, maybe covertly, maybe in secret but he usually had his way.

My grandparents did not have natural children, my mother was their adopted daughter and they loved her dearly. The affection was then transferred to me and I felt very much loved by my grandfather. He was a kind man, a softy, while my grandma was very energetic, no-nonsense person who ruled the family.

As a child I did not like to eat. I am sorry it belongs to the past now.  My grandmother challenge was to make me put on a couple of kilos during my stay in Sadowne, to show that she takes care of me well. I remember times when I was given  a bowl of cottage cheese with chives and liberal amount of sour cream. All organic! The instruction was : You will not leave the table until you finish.   Boy, it was a torture. The cottage cheese was growing in my mouth rather than moving in the direction of the stomach. And I wanted to go to play! My kind grandfather in such situations circulated between the room he worked in and the backyard, passing the table where the little girl was having a fight with the cottage cheese. He stopped at the table for a moment, stole a little of the offensive cottage cheese from the bowl to help me out. I thought he was an angel of mercy. Together we managed to present and empty bowl as a passport to the yard, fields and play.

One had to love such a grandpa and feel loved. 

Childhood revisited

The most happy memories of my childhood come from the times I spent with my grandparents in a Polish village in the eastern part of Poland. This part of the country is now called Poland B and that means representing lower standards than the prosperous districts. Place a bit behind the times.  My memories go to the times that are really far behind today. Sometimes I think that I have been living in three centuries. When I first visited my grandparents it was like going back in time to the XIXth century. There was no electricity there, water was drawn in buckets from a concrete well and I was taken from the station home to my grandparents by a horse and a buggy. No rubber wheels, just metal bands around the wooden wheels! It was a bumpy ride.

But the air was not polluted then. There were many pluses in those days at least in the eyes of the four-five years old girl. I was sent to my grandparents for many reasons, I presume. My mother was a really young woman, nineteen years older than myself. The grandmother performed the role of my carer perhaps better than my mother, she had more common sense and experience. My Beautiful Mother was also a working woman and she was away from home for most of the day. My parents were building a small business in the communistic Poland. They were considered to be enemies of the system and, at times, I felt guilty seeing that we were better off than most of the people around. I felt like I did not quite belong in the communistic world.

The official reason to send me away was – fresh air in Sadowne. Sadowne is the name of the village which has a big church and a big school. Much too big for the locals only. It also had its “upper class”. My grandmother was a kindergarten/school teacher in her unmarried times and my grandfather was a Polish-Soviet war hero and a tailor.  They were respectable people. I say it with tongue in cheek. Of course they were respectable but so were the others as well. Anyhow I was not supposed to be familiar with some of the neighbours. Some  were even considered to be a bad influence.

The neighbours on the right side did not meet with approval of my grandmother. There were many children there who were not clean and ran around bare foot. Not proper people according to my grandma. The father of the family used to drink too much and when under influence loudly disciplined his wife and children. One could hear shouts and screams coming from their house.  With time the boys of the family became strong enough to stop excesses of their father. The dramas became less frequent.

People who lived in the main street were not farmers, they were teachers, shop keepers, tailors. The right side neighbours were farmers. During harvest I could observe strange and fascinating activities like threshing wheat and haymaking. I was transfixed to the fence dividing the two houses looking at the magic of what was happening on the other side. It was all new to me. This was the only time I saw harvest work except for later on in movies about life in the nineteenth century.
   
                                   

One day I sneaked in to the neighbours through the gate in the dividing fence. The gate was not used often as there were no friendly visits between the two families.  However I can imagine that my naughty grandpa when he wanted to smoke a forbidden cigarette, he would cross the gate to go to the neighbour for a smoko.

Once I ventured into the forbidden territory to be warmly welcome and given a treat – big slice of dark bread, covered with glistening lard spiked with cracklings and sugar sprinkled on top. Revolting? Perhaps. But not too my taste at the time. It was heavenly good, a completely new, exciting taste. And a forbidden fruit! The bliss did not last long. I was not clever enough to hide my tressure and eat it in private. With my original sandwich in hand, I marched in to the kitchen of my grandma who seized it immediately and threw it to the rubbish bin with disgust. Oh, what a disappointment to the little girl! Such a fantastic food and so rudely taken away! Perhaps I will not ever be able to taste anything as good as that! Of course I have tasted many fantastic food after this event, like the oysters in Paris, I wrote about earlier. Or bread dunked in fragrant olive oil at Santo Spirito. This black bread with lard belongs however to the list of best food I tasted in my life. Actually some form of that specialty is now served in Polish folk restaurants, only the bread is not dark enough and there is no sugar served with it.

This was served while waiting for lunch with my Aussie friend when she visited Gdansk this year.

 In my dreamy plans I see myself someday visiting Sadowne again. This most likely will remain only a dream. But who knows?

Challenging times

It has been rather difficult for me to write new posts lately. One of the reasons is that I have not physically travelled much and my travels always provided me with easy and obvious choice of subjects. No easy choices these days. Another reason is that I am going through challenging times and it takes my thoughts away from communicating through blogging. The subjects that preoccupy my thoughts do not lend themselves to sharing through internet, at least I feel so. So what shall I write about ? This is my question.  The subjects that are currently in my thoughts are: friendship, gratitude, courage. They are very big subjects and I do not feel up to writing anything profound, at least not now. Hmm...

So I will write a bit about professional side of my life. I want to be current here so I will not reminisce on my past successes and failures. The middle part of my carrier was all about management, project management and leadership. This came to an end but I was not ready to keep smelling the roses as my only occupation. So, I became a certified life coach. There is a link here to my management/leadership past. There is continuation. But in the past I did not think much of “selling” even if for a while I thought that life is all about selling, that we sell something all the time. Like ideas. I think selling skills are important but I have not acquire them to the level of knowing how to sell my coaching successfully. I have not given up though. I strongly believe that coaching is something I could use to make my contribution.

This is how i see the scope of life coaching. My personal expertise is in Personal Development and Career

A week ago I came up with an idea to write posts for my coaching blog www.accoachonpurpose.com. Posts related to values. I feel very strongly that knowing and understanding one’s values can be very helpful in making life decisions. Recently it came to me through the LinkedIn contacts that knowing my values can help me to manage my emotions. This I found intriguing and very promising. The new writing project is to write a chapter about each identified value considering its practical uses and some general descriptions. This is still evolving in my head but I am excited about the project. Will it be also a marketing tool for my coaching? Not sure but I will have fun writing about something I have been very interested in for some years. I will learn some things in the process as well. That’s a plus.

This picture (by Stella Bowen) will find a place in my future articles about Values. To illustrate Friendship perhaps? 

and this Picasso should be a great illustration for writing about Freedom

This has been a bit different post today to the previous ones. A bit up close and personal. More than my earlier posts. Hmm...

Warm weather lifestyle

When I stop and think I have to envy myself the lifestyle I lead lately. It is now spring in full swing in Sydney and I still vividly remember spring in Poland which finished for me only three months ago. Maybe I do not envy as it is about myself I am thinking about but I should and I do feel grateful that I am able to live two springs a year. 

I am not a skier, hence I do not miss the cold weather, red nose, frozen hands and feet or snow in its slosh consistency. I can live very happily without it. Sure, there are some beautiful winter landscapes, there are times when snow is fresh and white making the world so quiet that you feel like wrapped up in cotton wool. Only if you think that in Poland winter lasts five to seven months and the beautiful white snow lasts maybe one or two days during the whole period you get less enthusiastic about living through the full four seasons.

This is a good version of Polish winter, but, boy, it was cold!

At the end of April the Northern Europe wakes up with colours and smells of spring. First come pussy willows as the symbol of future change in weather. You can get them in flower shops and they are also sold in streets by small entrepreneurs running their not fully legal small businesses at street corners.

My Polish favourite spring flower - lilac

Reminiscing I recall the time when walking though still a snowy park in Warsaw I was stopped by a reporter needing a spring picture for a newspaper. It was March, rather cold and I was wrapped up in a sheep coat. I was handed in a bunch of pussy willow branches, asked to smile,somebody took a picture of me, I got a nice thank you and the next day the 22nd or 23^rd of March, the first day of spring I saw my picture on the first page of an equivalent to Sydney Morning Herald with the caption “Warsaw spring, still in a heavy coat but already with bunch of pussy willow branches”.  What glory days they were... I wish I kept the newspaper cutting.

                      And  

Coming back to reality and 2014 in Australia, I returned from Poland at the end of August and was able to welcome Australian spring on the 1^st of September. I like the simplified way of starting seasons here. One does not have to remember if it should be  20ies, 21^st, 22nd or 23rd of March. Astronomy does not practice simple solutions. This year 2014 Northern spring equinox was on March 20, but I had to check it to make such a statement. 

Travelling through Australia this year I saw spring at its best, the Southern Hemisphere style. Wattles, in my mind, are an Aussie symbol of spring and I saw many of them this year. The suburban streets of Sydney are lined with azaleas and my favourite wisterias.  Different flowers, different smells, different beauty. I am so lucky I can observe and enjoy both of the spring editions.

My Australian favourite spring flower - wattle

Remembering Childhood Days

Many of my posts are about travelling. There is a Polish saying – Travels educate.  Yes, they do and I like to travel maybe because I like to learn new things. Learning according to some psychological test is one of my core strengths. I also like to experience new things. New landscapes, unseen before art, food not yet tasted, new people . I have rather eclectic approach here. And now when I came to my Australian home and will stay put for a while, I still travel. Recently, I have been travelling in time. To my childhood holidays with my grandparents.

It was a village in the eastern part of Poland, not far from the Russian border. The times when I visited my grandparents distance felt different to how it is now. Everything seemed so much bigger than now.  The village seemed like a whole universe to me. I did not have an idea that the Russian border was so near. To me it was not.

The distance from my grandparents house to the church seemed like a really significant one. Minutes seemed longer than they feel now. At that time I did not try to achieve in the same way as I leant to expect of myself over the years. With my current expectations I feel each day that I do not measure up to my life appetites. Something needs to be done here, but this is another topic. At the times when I was spending long months with my great parents, the days were full of activities and new experiences but I never had feeling that I should have done or achieve more. I might had plans for the next day, I might had been nicely tired after a full day but I did not think I felt guilty that had not done enough.

Now when I think about those blissful times I often think about my grandpa. Lovely man, a bit of a softy when dealing with his grandchild. I felt really loved by him. He was not an ideal man, of course. He suffered of asthma but smoking was one of his pleasures he could not resist.   However there was a very energetic and bossy grandma in the picture. According to her, smoking was strictly forbidden so my grandpa had to resort to  deviousness. He was working from home so my grandmother kept an eye on him during the whole days. I was sometimes sent to buy him cigarettes at the kiosk next to the church at the other end of the main street. It was a special village. It had a main street, a church and a school.

My grandparents lived opposite the school almost at the end of the main street. 

The village has only 6,000 people but the pupils come from the whole district. Such a small Polish Oxford on a grammar school level

The very end of the street was a couple of houses further and was marked by a cross. As I am writing about a catholic country it was only fitting that the  church marked the other end of the street. That was my destination when sent on the mission to supply my grandpa with his poison. I am not sure how he organised his private money, grandma was very bossy and wore pants in the household. I suspect that she took care of the family finances. But we are able to do even seemingly impossible things if we really want to. He had money to buy cigarettes.  My very gentle and honest grandpa was able to skim to protect his moments of pleasure even if he was damaging  his health. Well, we not always do what we should.

Strange country Poland, such a big church in such a small place

On reflection I was getting rather bad lessons in lying with and for my grandfather and supporting his behaviour which I should had been condoning.  Hmm... But I still love the memories of those days and my disobedient grandpa.