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Sunday, April 03, 2005
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WARSZAWA Jeff’s post about the pope at JVC Comments brought back a memory from my Fulbright year in Warsaw, a small moment I’d forgotten until I read his description of what the pope meant to Polish Americans. I was wandering along the streets of Warsaw -- this would have been winter 1992 -- and I passed an ordinary old woman in an ordinary black dress. She was really quite drab. Gray wispy hair, pale old face, heavy legs heavily stockinged. I was drawn more closely to her face as we neared one another, though, and I noticed something spirited in it. I smiled at her and she smiled back and pointed at what I’d not noticed -- a colorful pin on the breast of her black dress. It was a photograph of Karol Wojtyla. She was part of a crowd of drab old ladies walking toward me, a crowd I’d ordinarily have ignored. But I saw now that they all had big colorful Karol Wojtyla buttons pinned to their dresses, and they were all laughing and fired up. I figured they’d been to some rally or church event or other. For a moment it felt as though I were at Woodstock. |
