A few weeks ago, my very Polish mother arrived from a small town in south-western Poland to meet her half-Australian granddaughter for the first time. I gave birth in late November 2021, a time when COVID was still front-of-mind and international policies reflected that sentiment.
My parents, who had wanted to visit earlier but were prevented from doing so for a variety of reasons, settled on sending just Mum to help us with the baby as I recovered from a bout of physical and mental health issues.
While Mum has visited Australia a few times since returning to Poland (my parents lived here for 30 years), this was her first time visiting our little family of three – and I was very excited in the lead-up. This is because, although I am Polish, my partner is Australian. I am bilingual, he is not. That has never been a problem, but now that we have a baby, it’s made me think: Should I teach her how to speak Polish to connect her to my – our – heritage? And if I do, would it mean alienating her father?
Should I teach her Polish to connect her to our heritage? And if I do, would it mean alienating her father?
While I am a fluent Polish speaker (or at least as fluent as one can be after living in another country for more than 15 years), I am much more comfortable speaking in English. For one, I have largely grown up in Australia; most of my friends only speak English (except for my group of Polish ladies, who are also bilingual) and, as a journalist, English words are my jam.
But at my core, I remain undeniably Polish. This is reflected in my food choices (I don’t care what anyone says, pickle juice is delicious and covered in strawberry cream sauce make for a great dinner), my somewhat intense temperament and my willingness to welcome anyone, at any time, into my home and pantry.
So it makes sense that over the past year I have tried to teach little Evie some Polish. I often call her my little misio (teddy bear), I make all the cute Polish sounds (oyoiyoiyoi) and I’ve even read her a couple of Polish baby books that were sent by my parents in a fit of optimism.
The problem is that it feels like work. While some Polish comes naturally to me, speaking Polish is mostly a laborious activity that requires thought and brain cells that, frankly, with an infant, I no longer have to spare. Starting out with all the best intentions, I inevitably slid back into English the longer I spoke to Evie, too tired to figure out how to continue the conversation in Polish.
My parents would spend a whole hour cooing at Evie in Polish
The best I could do was call my parents, who would spend a whole hour cooing at Evie in Polish, describing to her how piękna (beautiful) and słodka (sweet) she was, how much they were going to uśćiskać (squeeze) her when they saw her.
At one stage, I gave up. The work required to maintain a culture that one is no longer surrounded by is immense. Culture is not just heritage: it is food, it is behaviour, it is convention and proverbs and values and idioms and music and films and expression. It is tradition, and it is something that, as a westernised Pole, I already struggle with on a daily basis.
Language is the glue. It is inextricably tied to culture and our surroundings. Without it, much of the complexity that makes up cultural nuance is lost
And language is the glue. It is inextricably tied to culture and our surroundings. Without it, much of the complexity that makes up cultural nuance is lost. The longer I spend in Australia and away from my parents, enmeshed in this nation’s unique multicultural milieu, I lose a little bit of that Polish edge – not all of it good, but also not all of it bad.
Now that my mum is here, she speaks to Evie constantly. They sing Polish baby songs – – and Mum has even taught her to clap at the mere sound of the song. She does veer into English – it’s hard not to – but it’s lovely to see my baby increasingly responding to Polish.
Mum cooks Evie the foods I used to eat as a child: finely cut vegetables sautéed in unsalted butter in a special mix of Polish spices and herbs; minced pork rissoles and sweet omelette, made by whipping eggs with a hand mixer, covered in plum jam.
I used to say to my boyfriend that when Evie is older, we will have in-jokes at his expense. I asked him recently if he’s bothered by me trying to teach our baby a language he cannot understand, and he doesn’t really mind. Sure, it is a tad alienating witnessing a little secret society in which he can never fully take part. But the truth is, he could always learn Polish.
When Evie gets older, I hope to send her to Polish school. Despite my grumpy teenage self who did not always enjoy trekking for over an hour on a Saturday morning for a sixth day of school, I am now grateful to my parents for sending me.
And even though she is only half-Polish, I hope Evie gets to experience all the joys of a bilingual life, too.
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The (secretly annoying) truth about raising a bilingual kid
