In 1996, I was a Peace Corps volunteer living in Jelenia Gora, Poland, near the border of both Germany and the Czech Republic or Czechia, as it’s now known. It was an election year, and I had only been in the country for only a few months, struggling with the language and my role as an American volunteer in a county I really knew little about. I had majored in history and concentrated on World War II Europe, which helped a little. I had thumbed through James Michener’s Poland and was acquainted with the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz. The newly free Central Europe was where I wanted to be. I thought I was prepared. But as the universe continues to laugh at my plans and make a beginner out of me at every turn, Poland proved no exception to the deep and heavy learning curve life offers, particularly when one steps out of one’s comfort.
Considering the headspace of my newly minted and very green volunteer self, I can reflect now on my relationship with Poland as if we were new friends in middle school going through similar, personal transitions. Both of us were redefining ourselves, trying to fit in and changing before one another’s eyes. I was teaching high school English in a town with a Pizza Hut in a building that was 600 years old. Coming to grips with a new landscape both dotted with moss-covered castle ruins and pockmarked with concentration camps, the horror of which isn’t fully translatable into words. I lived in an old communist block high-rise apartment and listened to the BBC World Service on a transistor radio that kept me connected to something familiar, even when the lights would go out.
Teaching volunteers were the norm then, as part of Poland’s democracy plan was to have their youth fluent in the lingua franca of global business while they reached for a seat at the EU table. In this role, I was able to talk to students who remembered standing in lines all afternoon with their mothers to get a roll of toilet paper the consistency of birthday streamers. Teenagers who now had opportunities their parents only dreamed of and no real playbook, other than failure wasn’t an option this time. Oppressive, authoritarian rule hurts people and limits lives, in case you need a reminder when you go to the polls next week.
Those years of living among a people who survived some of the most heinous acts in human history was an education. My generation of Americans knows nothing of that brand of suffering. Poland was a great teacher. A country whose spirit would not be snuffed out. It’s mere existence a triumph that embodied the most joyful hope for the future of humanity. At no time was this more apparent than the day I cast my vote in the 1996 US presidential election.
I got to Warsaw after another 5 hour, one-way train ride, which became just part of a normal weekend excursion. It was a Friday, and I believe I was at the Peace Corps headquarters for a routine, health check-up. I had been thinking about getting an absentee ballot but waited too long, and by the time I got the ballot I realized I would never get it back to the US in time to count. My only option was to go to the embassy and that Friday was the last opportunity to get it into the diplomatic pouch. Considering the state of transportation at the time in Poland (“toilets” on trains where you were looking down at the tracks rushing by) plus the lack of cell phones or even email, you turned up at your destination when you did. So by the time I actually made it to headquarters and had my appointment, it was late afternoon. The US embassy closed at 5 pm. It was 4:30 pm when I made it to the country director’s office and knocked on his door. Bob McClendon was a savvy guy and very much in control. I was holding my ballot and he immediately knew what I needed. He jumped up from his desk and called out “Adam!” who was Bob’s driver among other things. Adam was a young Polish man, always dressed smartly in a suit and tie.
“I have an American who needs to vote!” Bob said loudly and with emphasis, grinning broadly and gesturing in Adam’s direction to indicate the fate of my vote was now in his hands. Adam sprung into action with Spiderman agility. Words in Polish were exchanged which I didn’t catch other than samochod (car in Polish) and before I knew it; we were rushing toward a back exit. Adam quickly opened the door to the back seat. I got in and was barely settled when Adam fired up the engine and threw the car into reverse and then finally shifting into drive, as we flew forward into the pale, November sunlight of Warsaw.
As we sped down Nowy Swiat through the heart of Warsaw, a city that at the end of the second world war was reduced not just to rubble, but ashes, we closed in on the US Embassy with a velocity reserved for movie sets. Driving hard, at what I am sure was close to 70 miles per hour, I remember the expression on Adam’s face in the rearview mirror. His was a look of determination, seriousness, and fun, all at the same time. I remember lowering my gaze down toward the backseat upholstery, turning away from my own emotions. It was apparent, for Adam, there was no more important task in the world in that moment. Voting in a democratic election, which I took for granted, was to Adam a sacred act, something worth speeding for, something of such great value-something so American and heroic, an almost unimaginable privilege until so recently. I knew as it was happening I would never forget those precious few moments of reckless driving and what they symbolized. It was thrilling and wonderful, like a scene out of Willy Wonka, odd and disarming to have the very best of your culture reflected back at you through the hopes and dreams of another land. We sped into the driveway and I ran up the steps into the embassy. There was a window reserved for American citizen services and I was able to walk right up with my ballot and American passport, the pass keys to all things possible. The consular officer smiled and assured me it wasn’t too late, and with that, it was done. Thanks to Adam, and the collision of our national and personal fates, we had made it in time. We made the effort together, and my friendship with Poland and her complicated history and growing pains turned toward love.
So on Tuesday, I will think about Poland, as I always do, and how it rearranged me then and in a million other different ways. About how I learned that at its very best, what America might continue to represent to the world if we get it together. Part of that process is voting for representatives (and presidents) we feel can at least attempt to engage all people and the whole world, because you see everywhere there is an Adam waiting and willing with car keys in hand. Our votes count, and in the name of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Adam and all the great teachers of hard-won freedom, I wish you a good, long wait at the polls to reflect on the grave beauty of the right to vote, the right to choose who will represent this American thing, not just for you or me, but for the whole world.
sharedimpulse 