Randy Suits

Family was always important to the Polish People.  Antoni and Antonina invited family and friends to their home at every opportunity. Holidays would find Marzenie filled to capacity. Antonina would begin cooking for Easter and Christmas three days before the gathering. One month before Easter, the adults, young adults and children, went to church for their group recollection.  For the Easter tradition, they could eat no meat from Good Friday until Easter morning. The Polish would serve herring and sardines the evening before Easter morning. It was a Polish delicacy. On Easter morning there would be boiled eggs, vegetables, potatoes, celery salad, delicious horseradish with beets and horseradish with eggs. Antoni pulled the horseradish rods from the garden and hand ground it by the wide open kitchen window where his wife was busy preparing the meal. She baked the delicious home made yeast pastry with raisin, rum, vanilla, sliced almond marinated sweet orange peal, cheesecake, poppy seed pastry with sliced almond, walnuts, honey, multiple layer cake, ‘mazurka’. She baked about 20 different pastries, sometimes baking through Thursday night until Friday morning. When she baked, the stairways were filled with an unforgettable delicious aroma of the yeast pastries until the morning. She prepared her own recipe liquor lemon vodka, ‘cytrynowka’. Meantime, Antoni smoked home marinated 20 pound ham and sausages ‘kielbasa’ in the smokehouse ‘widzarnia’. He used cherry wood to smoke the meat. Antonina cooked the ham on Thursday night. Good Friday was a Holy Day for the family. They would feast all day, and visit Jesus Christ tombs in several churches. On saturday they went to church to bless a basket filled with eggs, bread, ham, horseradish salt, etc. On Easter morning, the men would all dress in their best suit and the women would wear their best dress, hat, gloves, shoes and coat. Everyone went to Easter Sunday Mass. When they returned home, Antonina and the women would scurry about the kitchen setting the table with smoked ham and all the dishes Antonina prepared and the guests brought. Before they ate, they would each take an Easter wafer and go to every person at the table and bless them, wishing the best in the coming year to their family. One might say, “I hope you have a healthy and prosperous year. May you have all the blessings and happiness of God.” Then they ate! And did they eat! It was a feast fit for a king. When you eat at a Polish home you never leave the table hungry. When the women came to your plate with a dish to serve you  and you said ‘enough’ at your Antonina’s table that meant one more spoonful. That is a Polish ‘enough’. You have to love those Polish women. They do make sure that no-one leaves the table hungry. The laughter, festivity and thankfulness saturated the senses as they ate the Easter meal. Each Easter was filled with love and precious memories. The day after Easter was ‘Smigus Dyngus’. They would visit a friend or family in their home or have guests to their home. There were Antonina and Antoni name day parties on 13 June, Christmas celebrations, and new years parties for friends and family as well. Those were good days when families and friends gathered together for relaxation and fun. Today new memories are being made which will be just as precious to the present generation as our memories are to us. Each generation has their personal Marzenie memories. It is all possible by the impossible dream of Antoni and Antonina who hoped against reason and imagined a home that would provide for the needs of their family. Hand in hand, side by side, and step by step they worked toward their goal until by the grace of our omnipotent and Holy God Most High, they achieved their highest hopes and aspirations. Marzenie  has become a living monument to achievement, courage and hope. All who were blessed to walk the hallowed rooms of this home carry in our hearts and minds Marzenie memories which enrich us all the days of our life on earth.

We are grateful for our Marzenie memories, Kochany

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