Remembering Christmas Past 1980

 

I wrote this on Facebook December 23, 2020 at 11:00 pm

On Christmas eve 1980 my almost 3 year old and my 6 month pregnant self returned to the US from Poland. There's more to the story but it will wait. I'm going to bed.

We were stationed in, Poland, where my husband was a consular officer at the US Consulate.   Poland I in general and Poznan in particular, was a difficult place to live.   Warsaw had been completely destroyed in WWII.  Poznan had buildings that were scarred by machine gun bullet holes.  I saw them every day when going for walks with our daughter.  The Polish government was communist, dominated by the USSR.

There were lines everywhere. If you saw a line, you got into it and then found out why people were in line. It could be for toilet paper or other consumables. It was almost always for food.

Shortly before we moved to Poland, the mood was changing.  The newly named Pope was Polish.  The first Polish pope in history.    Labor unions were stirring.  The rumblings of the beginnings of the Solidarity movement were afoot.

And the changes we saw were worrisome.  There were Russian MIG jets flying overhead.   There were convoys of East German soldiers in the streets of town.

With the help of the US Embassy, we decided that our daughter and I should return to the States.   

My husband sent a telegram to his parents in Falls Church, Virginia letting them know that their toddler granddaughter and their pregnant daughter in law would be arriving at Dulles Airport on Christmas Eve.

My in-laws had sent all of our Christmas presents to us in Poland already.  They didn’t want us to have nothing to open on Christmas day.  So they ran up to the local drug store (People’s Drug Store) and got what they could.  I got hand cream. My daughter for some wind up toys.  

It all worked out.

There’s a lot more to the story, but suffice it to say, our son was born March 4, 1981.  My husband was able to be there for the birth.  The two kids and I traveled back to Poland about 8 weeks later.

At 66, I have a lot of Christmas stories to look back on.  I think that 1980 was the most memorable and unusual in my family!