Ciocia* Magda was my mom’s youngest sister, and I met her (perhaps) properly when I was seven. At least that’s when I remember her properly. Family history says she stayed with us for two years but I can’t say if being seven was the start, the end or fell somewhere in between. I remember a picture on my birthday with her holding tulips and a present for me, though I can’t say for sure which birthday it was. I do remember her being around when I started school at the age of six and then getting a package from the US from her before we left to join her in the US when I was nine. I also remember a Greyhound trip to Montana and seeing my first cockroaches on our kitchen floor in Jersey City – at which point I realized that she was not as brave as she’d always led on to believe – but I cannot remember for the life of me whether or not she was on the flight back to Europe or not. I was seven or eight in Jersey and Montana, because I remember attending day camp at the JCC but I also remember a teacher giving me a going away present from school and a hint of surprise from some people (students or teachers, I can’t say) upon my return. That was another key element in my life, saying goodbye only to return to everyone’s surprise (my own subconsciously excluded) and leaving suddenly before I could say my goodbyes, never to return or see people again. 

What I do remember is everyone thinking that ciocia Magda was my mother whenever we showed up together and her being royally mad at that, which looking back on it now was perfectly understandable. At 24 I would have cursed everyone who even dared insinuate a child was mine. I love children, always have, always will. But they belong with their parents when it comes to determining connections, though I have no problem being the cool older cousin, family friend or aunt. Ironically, when I was nineteen and basically nannying ciocia Magda’s 6-year-old daughter for that summer, she called me mommy a few times before we settled on Cousin. But back to ciocia Magda. 

I didn’t mind the comparisons because with a child’s mind I idolized her. She was beautiful in my eyes with her blonde hair and she always smelled nice. Puka shell necklaces were the huge thing back then and I always wanted one like hers. When I say wanted what I mean is craved, desired, absolutely, desperately needed to have, now. And when I finally did get one (I don’t remember who it was from but chances were high that it could have been from her), I lost interest in it straight away when I realized that it didn’t smell as awesomely as hers did. In fact it didn’t smell at all. It just lay there, like a dead body, a shell, nothing. 

The doll she sent me from the US when she moved there fared better. Or at least I played with it more. It was small enough to place in a small backpack but still big enough to feel comfortable sleeping with it, and came all in blue, except for her hair which wasn’t as blonde as ciocia Magda’s, but blonde enough to remind me of her. I don’t remember much of how we reunited, though we must have because I have distinct memories of sharing a bed in one room on a pullout couch with my mom while ciocia Magda slept on a proper bed in the other room and a few stories here or there, but when we left Chicago just before the end of the school year, I recall crying more over the fact we were leaving Chicago at all than leaving her. Even though we hadn’t spoken since I was nine (going on ten), I didn’t feel like she was a stranger when I stayed with her for the summer ten years later. I guess somewhere in the back of my mind she’d always been the decent one, and – given the age difference of nineteen years between her and my mom – my potential biological mother (though the logistics of getting a pregnant woman / newborn out of a socialist country would have been insurmountable at best. Interestingly, when I stayed with her I already had all my guards up and was treating the arrangement with her as an opportunity to be back in the US. Which means that she pretty much could have been anyone who offered me room and board in exchange for some nannying on an aupair’s wage (which she didn’t pay). Except that being aware of family dynamics, and with the added advantage of being of age, I was deliberately playing with her, feeding her false information about my life to lead her away from what was really going on. I’ve never liked people I don’t feel close to or trust knowing even the smallest detail about my private life or anything even remotely associated with me. 

Ciocia Magda taught me a lot of things, but the one thing I remember off the top of my head was how to take an ice cream from the vending machine at the supermarket, eat it while shopping, then hide the empty container before you nonchalantly walked to the checkout line so you didn’t have to pay for your guilty pleasure. The guilt of course lay in the amount of calories you were consuming, not in essentially stealing, but as a child I just saw it as an adventure, something naughty we were both doing to piss off mom. Funny thing is, I’ve never done that with anyone else, almost as though I considered that to be a ciocia Magda thing, something I didn’t need to share or do with anyone else, and certainly not something I needed to pass on to a child when I became the adult e.g. her own daughter. 

Because eventually ciocia Magda got married and gave birth to a daughter, something we were notified of when wujek Zbyszek stayed with her. For someone who loved his country, he sure spent a lot of time working abroad: two years with us in Germany, then some time in Austria and two or so years with ciocia Magda in Chicago. Because where else would a Polish girl settle. Actually, I’m not sure how she ended up in Chicago from her first address in New Jersey, but I was a kid and kids don’t really ask too many questions, mostly because they don’t know how to ask them.

Not for nothing, but Picsart’s AI generation of my prompt (a blonde, blue-eyed aunt, 24 in the 1970s wearing a puka shell necklace) produced an image that is so spot on, I only want to play with the shading. Guess ciocia Magda, more than anyone else was truly a product – and a cliche – of her time. 

*aunt