alice journeys as a daughter of Polish refugees WW2. how her Grandmothers narration insipires her to venture through life with hope, compasssion, and a will to survive
‘Got to go now Papa’, I promised Babcia I would help make the sour cabbage, she is waiting for me in the cellar. My brother is waiting for me. We are going to help smash the cabbage’ ‘Alice you are going to press the cabbage?’ ‘Thank you for correcting my English papa’. Alice opened the cellar door and ran down the many cold stone steps into the cellar. There were about four large terracotta bowls, basins; they were huge basins, full of cabbage. Babcia had removed the lids. ‘Come on you two, time for some fun’ Edward and Alice took a seat and Babcia removed their shoes. She scrubbed their feet with a brush. The children laughed as she would tickle their feet. ‘Okay, now the feet are clean children and now it is time to dance’.
The children would jump into the basin, hold hands and stamp up and down on the cabbage. They would sing songs from top of the pops. The hit that year was the Monkees and the Kids stomped up and down singing
‘Hey, hey, we're the Monkees
And people say we monkey around. But we're too busy singing
To put anybody down.’
They would hold their hands to their mouths as if they were microphones and they would sing out very loud’. ‘This is much better than kicking cans on the street’ Edward told Alice. ‘Yes, but better not tell everyone how we make the sour cabbage with our feet, because they might not buy any of it’. ‘That’s our secret’. The kids continued to dance and stamp the cabbage. ‘I feel like Lucille Ball, stamping on grapes, I love Lucy’ Alice stomped on the cabbage. ‘Yes Alice, I wonder how many people buy the wine after they stomp on the grapes?’ Edward asked. ‘Oh I imagine everyone as the wine would be truly full of human spirit, after those feet crushing the grapes’. Alice replied. ‘And the cabbage is made with the salt of the earth, that is because we are the nicest, most genuine, caring, considerate human beings, that anyone could meet...This is the Kolinsky family...The salt of the earth’ With that they threw the salt into the air.
