CO ZAWIERA NASZ KOSZYK

WHAT OUR BASKET CONTAINS

Wielka Sobota / Holy Saturday — April 14th, 1979 — St. Stanislaus Parish — noon blessing

1. 1.Baranek wielkanocny/Easter butter lamb

   Carved this morning from a half-pound block of Land O'Lakes pressed into the cast-iron lamb mold my sister Stefa mailed me from Krzepice in October 1948 wrapped in three layers of newspaper. Peppercorn eyes pressed in with a darning needle. Sits in the small glass dish that came with Bronisława's china. The little resurrection banner on the toothpick — I keep a strip of red ribbon in the sewing drawer for this purpose, cut fresh every year. Forty Easters now from this mold.

   on the butter lamb

   Stefa mailed me the mold from Krzepice in October 1948 wrapped in three layers of newspaper and a piece of her own dress. The letter inside said the mold was our mother's from before the war and Stefa had been keeping it for me since 1939. I have used it forty Easters now. It needs to be soaked in cold water for an hour before you press the butter or the lamb's tail breaks off — Stefa wrote that on the letter and I have remembered it every year.
2. 2.Pisanki/A dozen dyed eggs

   A dozen dyed Wednesday morning in the enamel pot my mother used in 1916. Onion skins for the deep amber, beet juice and vinegar for the maroon, four done with wax-resist in the spiral pattern my grandmother Józefa taught us in Krzepice. Twenty minutes in cold water to start. They rest on a bed of fresh bukszpan inside the basket so they do not roll. Two cracked while I was dyeing — those stayed in the kitchen.

   on the pisanki

   My mother taught me to save onion skins all year in a paper sack hung from the pantry door. By March there is enough to dye three dozen eggs the deep brown-gold I cannot get from anything else. Stefa still does it the same way over there. I have written her four times this year and the last letter took six weeks to come — the postal in Krzepice goes slow in March. She uses the sister enamel pot. We agreed in 1929 we each kept one.
3. 3.Placek/A small loaf of sweet bread

   Baked Wednesday afternoon from the recipe my mother-in-law Bronisława dictated to me at this kitchen table the first Easter Stanisław and I were married, March 1931. She did not write recipes, she said them aloud and I wrote them on the back of a Sohio gas-bill envelope I still have folded in the recipe tin. Yellow raisins. Sweet egg dough. Rises three times before the bake. The small loaf for the basket; the big loaf is on the breadboard for tomorrow's table.

   on the placek

   Bronisława came over from Stanisław's mother in 1930 to help him meet the boat. She did not speak English a word and I did not speak Polish well enough yet for her speed. We learned each other in the kitchen. The first placek I baked under her watching she did not say it was good but she ate two slices and that was the same thing. She passed in 1954 in the bedroom upstairs. I have made the placek every Easter for forty-eight years now.
4. 4.Kiełbasa/A ring of dry sausage

   Picked up Thursday afternoon at Sokołowski's on Fleet Avenue. Dry-cured, the kind with the marjoram and the garlic and the smoke he does himself in the back. Tied with white butcher string. It will rest at the side of the basket against the linen so it does not press the pisanki.

   on the kiełbasa

   Mr. Sokołowski's father knew Stanisław's father in Galicia before the first war. When I go in on the Thursday before Easter he does not let me say what I want, he wraps the ring himself in the back, ties it with the white string, and brings it out with both hands folded around it. He has done this since Stanisław passed in 1973. I leave the money on the counter and we do not speak about it. He nods. I nod. The bell over the door rings and I am outside on Fleet Avenue before I have time to thank him.
5. 5.Sól/A small cruet of salt

   The small glass cruet of salt the parish blessed at the vigil Mass in 1962. I refilled it Wednesday from the Morton's in the cupboard. The cruet has been in every basket since I bought it at the Polish bookstore on Broadway for fifty cents in October 1962.

   on the salt

   Father Wieczorek blessed the cruet itself before he blessed the salt inside it. He said the cruet would carry salt to the table of a Christian household every year of my life and after, and he was right about that. I will leave the cruet to Helena when the time comes. She knows. We have not spoken about it and she knows.
6. 6.Chrzan/A slice of fresh horseradish

   Grated this morning from a root my son Roman pulled from his garden in Parma Wednesday evening. Roman grows it in the bed behind his garage. He brought me three roots wrapped in a damp dishtowel. I grated this one for the basket and the other two are in a jar with white vinegar in the icebox for Sunday breakfast with the kiełbasa and the eggs.

   on the chrzan

   Roman's wife Helena did not understand horseradish when she married Roman in June 1968. She is a good German girl from Lakewood. She has come around. She helps Roman dig the bed in October now. The first Easter she carried a basket she put a small dish of yellow mustard in instead of chrzan and Roman did not say anything until they were in the car. I would have done the same.
7. 7.Małe masło paschalne/A small paschal butter-lamb

   A smaller lamb molded yesterday from quarter-pound Land O'Lakes in the small wooden mold I bought at the Polish import store on Lorain Avenue in 1968. Cut a fresh strip of red-and-white grosgrain for the banner this morning. The big lamb is for the basket; this small lamb is for the breakfast table Easter Sunday between the placek and the chrzan.

   on the small lamb

   Małgorzata helped me press this one yesterday after school. She is nine. She is finally tall enough to reach the counter without the stepstool. She pressed the butter into the mold with the heel of her hand and I told her about the lamb my grandmother Józefa carved for our Easter table in 1914 in Krzepice — pressed butter, no mold, just her thumbnail for the eyes. Małgorzata listened the whole way through. She is the kind of nine that listens.
8. 8.Lniana serwetka/The embroidered linen napkin

   The square of white linen my mother Anna embroidered in 1924 in Krzepice when I was sixteen and she was preparing me to keep my own household. Pisanki-spiral stitching around the four edges — the same spiral my grandmother Józefa taught us for the wax-resist eggs — and a small monogram J.W. (Jadwiga Wójcik, my name then) in the corner. She gave it to me with the prayer book the morning I left for Gdynia to take the boat.

   on the linen

   She knew when she gave me the napkin she was not going to see me again. We did not say it. The boat was the Pułaski out of Gdynia and the crossing was eleven days. I had the napkin folded inside the prayer book in my coat pocket the whole way over. I have used it in every basket since 1929. There is a small ink-blot at the corner from where I paused just now writing this and the pen pooled. I will leave it. She would have left it.
9. 9.Bukszpan/A sprig of fresh boxwood

   A small bundle from the bush by the back porch. The sprigs line the bottom of the basket so the eggs and the lamb dish do not roll on the way up the church steps. They smell green and a little sharp when you crush a leaf. I cut them after the morning coffee, six sprigs about the length of my hand, tied with kitchen twine.

   on the bukszpan

   Stanisław planted the bukszpan bush in 1955, the spring we moved into this house from the apartment over the bakery on Fleet Avenue. He dug the hole himself with a coal shovel and packed it with peat. Out on the back porch. The bush Stanisław planted. Buds in March, unwatched. I prune it the first warm Sunday in March with the kitchen shears so the sprigs come out the right length by Easter. He pruned it for eighteen years and I have pruned it for six. It does not seem to mind which of us is doing it.
10. 10.Karta modlitewna/The prayer card

    The small printed prayer card from Father Andrzejewski's funeral Mass at St. Stanislaus in November 1971. Black border. His ordination 1934, his profession 1928, the prayer to St. Joseph for a holy death printed on the back. I keep it in the cedar chest with the linens between Easters.

    on the prayer card

    Father Andrzejewski baptized Roman in March 1942 the week before Stanisław shipped out, and married Roman and Helena in June 1968, and buried Stanisław in November 1973, and at his own funeral in November 1971 they handed these cards out at the back of the church. I have kept one in every basket since because he blessed every Holy Saturday basket I ever brought to St. Stanislaus from 1929 to 1971, and it does not feel right to bring a basket up that side aisle without him in it somehow. Father Sieracki blesses the baskets now. He is a good young priest. He nods at me when he sees the card.
11. 11.Medalik Matki Boskiej Częstochowskiej/Our Lady of Częstochowa medallion

    A small enameled tin medallion on a blue cord that my granddaughter Małgorzata gave me at Christmas in a box wrapped in newsprint comics. She bought it at the parish gift shop with her saved-up allowance and a quarter from Roman she did not think I knew about. It is the first year for this medallion in the basket and the first year Małgorzata is walking with us up the church steps tomorrow.

    on the medallion

    Małgorzata is nine. She has been practicing all week the part where she carries the linen cover folded over her arm. She does not yet know that I have decided to give her the linen napkin when she is sixteen the way my mother gave it to me. I have not told Helena yet either. I will tell Helena Sunday after Mass when the kitchen is quiet. The medallion goes in the basket this year and every year while Małgorzata is small enough to walk between us.

12. 12.Mała kartka z imionami/A small slip of paper with names

    I add this slip every year on Holy Saturday morning. This year the slip has three names: my brother Władek in Krzepice (in February — Stefa wrote me the letter, it came two weeks late), Mrs. Helena Wojciechowska from down the block (she carried baskets to St. Stanislaus for sixty-three years and her last basket was Easter 1978 and we walked up the steps together that morning), and the small Pawlikowski cousin in Buffalo whose name I will not write here because she was three years old and her mother does not want her name written on anything yet. The slip goes in the basket with everything else and Father blesses it with everything else and afterward I burn the slip in the kitchen sink and rinse the ashes down the drain because the names have been carried to the blessing and that is what they came for. — J.P., Holy Saturday morning.