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Writing Reflections By Karen Kaiser

At the time, the writer is responsible for everything, and at the same time [she] is simply lost. [She] has to be willing to stay lost until what [she] finds—or what finds [her]—has the validity that the instant (with [her] as its sole representative) can recognize—at that moment [she] is transported, not because [she] wants to be, but because [she] can’t help it. Out of the wilderness of possibility comes a vine without a name, and [her] poem is growing with it.

William Stafford, Acceptance Speech, National Book Award, 1963 [Pronoun changed to feminine from original text]

In the process of learning about William Stafford’s early

morning writing and reflection practice, I have begun my own writing adventure. And indeed I have felt lost at times, transported to some new truth, and discovered vines without names. One example of this was a morning reflection on my grandmother that gave birth to my poem:

Grandmother

At 3649 Belmont Street there is a colorful almost psychedelic painted house. It has not always appeared as such.

Not so many years ago, its colors are muted brown with white trim. Inside walls dressed in patterned paper and neutral paint colors.

The kitchen spacious with hand-crafted cabinets for pastries, bread, utensils and tablecloths for entertaining relatives and friends. A warm and cozy place. The scratching sounds of a tiny black dog-Mitzi scouring beneath my grandmother’s feet. Grandmother welcoming

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my mother, sister and myself with smells of baking sweets and savory treats from the old country of Yugoslavia.

Then my sister scurrying outside to play with Mitzi. My mother attending to some needed house repairs with father. For a moment, I linger behind just grandmother and me. She envelopes me in her warm embrace and an outpouring of a rich mix of English-Croatian. But quickly she withdraws neglecting to answer any of my questions about family or friends or history of the ‘Old Country’. Is this an effort to shield me from some truth? Is the past too painful to address? Or is it her quest in becoming ‘American’? To leave her own language, culture and history behind? Either way, revisiting her in this familiar place, feeling robbed of my own culture by unanswered questions, and void of key clues to describe and name the missing family vines.

I turn away in bewilderment.

As I leave the beloved kitchen I am left with smells of baking bread, juicy apple streusel and a savory pot roast. And wondering, wondering, wondering, what was grandmother’s life really like?

In writing this poem, I was following one of Stafford’s models for writing poetry. This model includes first describing a place with sensory details and emotions, then addressing an idea with a reflection from that place, and finally book-ending the poem with another description. What I discovered as I wrote was that there has always been something of my grandmother that has eluded me. She was always welcoming and hospitable. But I never heard her speak about her home country, the former Yugoslavia or the region she came from in Zagreb, Croatia.

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As I grew older I had so many missing family vines my mother could not answer. Who were my great grandparents? Did I have any living relations left in Croatia? What ever happened to grandpa when he left grandma to find gold in California? Did grandpa mean to abandon the family? Or did he die in a mining accident? The answers were always the same. Grandma Juliana Kikalich did not want to talk about the ‘Old Country’ or grandpa, who had abandoned his family. Juliana had severed all ties with home, because her country was always in some conflict that involved violence and war. According to Grandma, relatives and friends only wrote her to ask for money, because they assumed since she lived in the United States she was wealthy. So she finally stopped corresponding with those left behind in Yugoslavia. There are a few things I do know about my grandmother. Juliana worked 2 to 3 jobs as a seamstress barely managing to support her family as a single mother. When grandma became a US citizen, as was the custom then, she shortened her name from Kikalich to Kay to make it sound more ‘American’. She only spoke English with her children, although many times her English included colorful words of half Croatian and English. Juliana moved away from the Croatian community on the west side of Portland to Belmont street in order to be more immersed in what she saw as mainstream American culture. She wanted her children, my mom and her brother, to be ‘American’. But in this effort to Americanize herself and her children she denied them and her grandchildren of valuable family heritage. That included not even telling my mother anything about her grandparents. As a result, there is very little my sister and I know about our family history on the maternal side. We know our grandmother was well educated and worked as a teacher and translator in her own country. Her parents owned a hotel in Zagreb and she came from a well to do family. Juliana Kikalich came here on her honeymoon in the early 1900’s with Nickolas Kikalich and stayed. She was married prior to that to a man who reportedly died in a conflict with Turkey. We do not know for sure our grandmother’s maiden name or the first or last names of our great grandparents. We have some records that say her name prior to

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Kikalich was Zupcic. But was this her maiden name or her name from her first husband?

In the middle of all these questions, my sister Julia Ann and I made a wonderful discovery. We were cleaning out my father’s house when we discovered a locked trunk.

My sister said, “I wonder what is inside that trunk? Some family treasure? What could it be?”

My sister’s husband scoffed, “It’s empty for sure. There’s nothing in there.”

“We could at least call a locksmith and find out,” I offered. And so we did, and it yielded pictures we had never seen.

There were pictures of my mother, grandmother, grandfather and great grandmother. It was as if we had been sent a life line to our family history and to find at least some partial answers. We still have no name for great grandmother. Great grandfather is absent from the pictures; so that brings up more questions.

Grandpa  Nickolas  Kikalich  and    Grandma  Juliana  Kikalich  

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Grandpa  Nickolas,  second  person  to  right,  first  row  

Grandma  Juliana  Kikalich  and  Her  Mother  

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All this is to say in my quest to find out more about my

family history, and my interaction with Stafford’s essays on writing, I have discovered something more important than uncovering facts. As I have allowed myself to travel back in time to my grandmother’s house, knowing the names of my great grandparents seems less important. I see my grandmother for who she really was in spite of her need to keep secrets. I have been reminded of the sweet smells from her kitchen, her love for her children and grandchildren, and her best of good intentions and wishes for their futures. I am saddened that she couldn’t share with us more of our cultural background, but I understand those were different times. It was a war torn Yugoslavia, which she wanted to protect us from. She saw only hope in the present and the future with her new life in her new country, and she saw no value in talking about the ‘Old Country’ that in her eyes only included war and death. She could not see far enough ahead to a

Our  mother  Gertrude  May  Kikalich,  In  front  of  her  Portland,  Oregon  home,  with  her  cat  and  dog.    

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time when her country would have new boundaries and a prospect of peace. She never dreamed that her descendents would want to travel back to what she called ‘The Old Country’ and learn about their family roots. As I reflect on the two perspectives, my grandmother’s dreams and hopes for the future in contrast to mine, I think of Stafford’s Poem “Vocation”:

This dream the world is having about itself Includes a trace on the plains of the Oregon trail, A groove in the grass my father showed us all One day while meadowlarks were trying to tell something better about to happen. I dreamed the trace to the mountains, over the hills, And there a girl who belonged wherever she was. But then my mother called us back to the car: She was afraid; she always blamed the place, The time, anything my father planned. Now both of my parents, the long line through the plain, The meadowlarks, the sky, the world’s whole dream Remain and I hear him say while I stand between the two, Helpless, both of them part of me: “Your job is to find what the world is trying to be.” (Ask Me, by William Stafford,2014, p.5)

In reading this poem I think of how my grandmother and grandfather followed their own trail on a long train ride from New York to Portland, Oregon. The line that speaks of the girl who belonged wherever she was reminds me of my grandmother, who fell in love with the Columbia River Gorge and Multnomah falls. I also think of my mother and myself and our love we shared for the beauty found in Oregon’s rivers, waterfalls and Pacific Ocean beaches.

Additionally, the line of the “meadowlarks were trying to tell something better about to happen.” I see in this the future of a peaceful Croatia that my grandmother could not see. In relation to her own country the lines, “she was afraid; she always blamed the place, the time…”for me really explains her world view. This

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view is understandable given the constant conflicts my grandmother witnessed growing up in her home country.

The last stanza that refers to “both of my parents” I see as a metaphor for both of my grandmother’s homes, Zagreb, Croatia, and Portland, Oregon. And like my grandmother “I stand between the two, helpless, both of them part of me”… with my job like my grandmother’s being “to find what the world is trying to be.” For my grandmother that involved moving away from Yugoslavia to a world that offered more opportunity and peace. For my mother it was taking advantage of the new opportunities such as a college education and career that her mother could not achieve. For me it is bringing the two worlds together the old and the new, celebrating my own cultural background and working with friends towards a more inclusive world.

The  three  generations  together  from  back  left  to  right,  Gertrude  May  Kikalich,  Grandma  Juliana  Kikalich  and  granddaughters  Karen  and  Julia  Ann.