#they were childhood sweethearts from the scholasticate | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

wouldnt-it-be-hilarious-if-i · 2 years ago

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I'm not doing an official Polish update post just yet since I've only done a little bit of actual practicing with Polish in the last week. But I did start researching!

First off, I want to go into detail to explain my connection to WW2 and why it is one of my special interests. As you may know from one of my posts on this blog, half of my family is from Germany.

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My Oma came from a very tiny farming community (Voitsberg) probably less than seven hours away from the Polish border. My entire life, I've known that I am German and grew up eating German food and hearing stories about Germany.

My mom was born here in the US. But my aunts and uncles were born in Germany, and some still have German citizenship. The first time I learned anything about Germany that I truly remembered was when I was six or seven.

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We were at the scholastic book fair. The scholastic book fair is the hallmark of any early 2000s public school childhood, at least in the US. Scholastic, an popular publishing company, would set up book faires for a week in the spring in school libraries. The books were usually never cheap, and they always had fun toys as well as interesting books. It was my favorite time of year, and you were very lucky if your parents came because then they might pay for something. My parents always somehow sent me with just enough money to afford an eraser or something. Never any of the good books lmao

That year, my mom stopped me from running around and pulled out this one book. It was a children's book on Anne Frank. She said, "You should really read this, sweetheart. It's important that you do." And I was very much a "if the cover doesn't look pretty or have fairies on it, I'm not interested" kind of kid so I was like um, thanks, and promptly forgot about it entirely. She did explain it all to me, but I honestly don't remember fully hearing her.

Anyway, years later, I learned about the Holocaust in school. And as someone who was originally quite proud of being German, this hit me hard. I was a super sensitive child, and I am still a sensitive person.

As a child, and this is so fucking morbid, I used to watch a lot of murder shows with my mom and research kidnappings and disappearances of other kids. I'd watch YouTube videos about kids who died in car crashes and just super gruesome and violent ways. And I did this because I took everything extremely personally. I thought it was my job to carry the weight of every bad thing that ever happened to anyone, and so id sit there and watch videos like that specifically so I could remember their stories.

So, when I say learning about the Holocaust hit me hard, I mean that. I actually became lowkey obsessive with it. I thought that if my ancestors could do that to other people, that had to mean that I was where that violence ended. I'd go on Holocaust memorial websites when I was eleven, and research the missing people online. I'd try to match up missing and displaced children to people on Facebook, I'd read books on this stuff constantly, and I'd pay extra attention in school when they taught us about it.

It hit me even harder when I realized how personal Anne Frank actually is to me. Anne Frank was born on June 12th, which is my mother's birthday. And she and her family were taken in by the Nazis on August 4th, which is my birthday. She lived in a city not far from where my grandmother grew up and in a city like maybe thirty minutes to an hour out from where my great aunt worked.

Reading her diary as a kid, I felt immensely close to her and guilty for what my ancestors out her and her family through. Even more so now that I know she was likely bisexual as well. If I could talk to anyone famous today, I'd talk to her.

Anyway, I carried a lot of shame for most of my life because of my German ancestry. This unit in school always came with crying and guilt on my part. It made me genuinely sick to know that this was in my bloodline.

Fortunately, my mom (or maybe my older sister?) told me when I was fourteen, just like super casually mentioned it, that my family helped protect a Jewish family during the Holocaust. She told me that my Oma was only five years old at the time, so she didn't know a lot. We don't know who the family was. But we know that our family either hid them, or provided them with food often.

I don't think y'all understand the relief I felt upon hearing this. Remember I carried this weight on my shoulders for years, like at like four or five years. But I still had a lifelong interest in Jewish history, WW2 and the Holocaust. As a direct result of my ancestry, I decided to study European history in college and plan to get my masters in something to do with Jewish history or human rights.

As I said before, I grew up with extreme guilt about being German. But also with an intense passion for human rights. As a child, I lived in Hawaii. In school, we learned American history and we learned Hawaiian history. And for those of you who don't know, Hawaiian history is SAD.

It's upsetting and I'll never not fully agree that they shouldn't even be a fucking state. In short, their sovereignty was ripped out from beneath them by a country that should have been an fucking ally. When European settlers came to Hawaii, 1/3 of the population was wiped out from disease. 1/3 was forced to become more "civilized". And 1/3 died from other factors. I learned all this as a ten year old, and I was horrified. I also learned that Hawaii is still continuously abused. They truly deserve their kingdom back. If you go to Oahu, you can visit the palace. It's beautiful. It's the only state that was once a kingdom.

Currently, I'm feeling the same horror about the partitions of Poland. I tend to take extreme violence upon others statehood and cultures very personally because of everything stated above, and this just made me really angry. It's probably one of the saddest histories I've ever read, and I just told y'all about Hawaii.

Anyway, the map at the beginning of this post was Poland before the partitions.

And this is Poland five years after the last partition.

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The green territory is Austria, the yellow is Prussia, and Russia is beige. The former Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth boundary lines are highlighted in red.

Apparently, the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was, in the 16th and 17th centuries, one of the most powerful empires in Europe. In the late eighteenth century, however, the country was picked apart by it's imperialist neighbors, Russia, Prussia and Austria, until it began to disappear completely.

Except an entire landmass with people and customs and history cannot just disappear, no matter how badly Mother (insert one of the neighboring country's names) wants it to. It's still there.

Some eighteenth century authors wrote about it, and many satirists had opinions on the partitioning.

"All contemporary social crimes have their origin in the partition of Poland. The partition of Poland is a theorem of which all present political outrages are the corollaries."

VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables, 1862

Another person, a foreigner, wrote that:

"Thus on the very frontier itself we got the feeling that from this point we were outside the precincts of real European civilisation."

GEORG BRANDES, Polen, 1888

By the end of the 18th century, Poland was struggling to maintain it's national identity underneath the boot of russification in those parts of the partition and germanization in other parts. In the Prussian and Russian partitions, Catholic churches changed to Orthodox churches, for example. This is not a small thing, by the way. Poland is largely a Catholic country. This must have been not only extremely insulting, but also so enraging.

Warsaw became a fortress meant to ensure there would never be any fighting back on the part of the Polish people. Soldiers manned the streets, and Tsar Nicholas even told the Polish people what would happen if they dared to dream of an independent Poland.

"I ordered for this Citadel to be built and I declare that with the slightest attempt to rebel, I will order the city to be bombarded, I will ruin it, and be sure that I will not allow it to rise from the rubble." Fucking dick.

By the 1860s, Polish was banned in schools. Well, it was being erased from every aspect of social life. But especially in schools. "The Poles call this period the 'Apukhtin night', after a Russian school superintendent whose dream it was to hear Polish mothers singing Russian lullabies to their children. The fate of the Poles in Prussia is similar." I'm sorry, but that literally sounds like some kind of fucking fetish because what the actual hell? Like that's strangely specific. Just say you have a mommy kink and move on. You don't have to traumatize a whole country. That fact really gives me the ick. But I digress.

The cool thing about Polish people is they're pretty much all baddies. I've never met one that wasn't. I say this because of course they tried to find ways around this shitty arrangement. As that one guy from Jurassic park said, "Life will find a way."

One of my favorite examples that I read about on the page I found was Wojciech Drzymała. "He was a Polish peasant from the Grand Duchy of Poznań, who for almost four years fought a legal dispute with the Prussian authorities over permission to build a house on a plot of land he had bought." Basically, he wasn't able to build his house even though he should have been able to despite all the red tape. So, he cleverly decided to sit his wagon on the land and move it a little bit every day so that he could argue that "a mobile vehicle was not subject to the building regulations." Which is proof alone that even people in the 18th century were fucking hilarious. That's literally so clever 😂

There was a lot of censorship as well. Not just with the Polish language. Of literature, newspapers, magazines, you name it. Even printing words like "feeling of unity" or "freedom" was not allowed because it might give the Polish people hope, and God knows we can't risk the establishment crumbling under the weight of its own bullshit.

No talking about Polish music or culture or national dress. You like polish romanticism? Not allowed, dumbass. Go sit with your dunce cap on and think about what you just suggested. No enjoying your own culture in your own country for you. 😐

I have a lot more research to do. But this is what I've got so far. Sorry if my tone at any point was disrespectful to anyone except Austria and Russia. It actually really pisses me off when I read about things like this, and that's why I'm so passionate about human rights. I won't lie when I say I cried a little reading about this. It just makes me genuinely upset to read about it. I'm so grateful to the kind anon who directed my research! 💖💞 You are an angel.

Also, if anyone is curious as to where I got the overview of most of my research, I'll direct you to this super cool and interactive website! I really like it, and it's given me a lot of places to look for further research.

Until next time! ☺️

#brookspolishpractice

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aspiratinganxiety · 6 years ago

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Happy Birthday, Darlin’

Happy 20th, Sweetheart.

Sleepy drabble with an inexperienced 20 year old Jason Todd. ‘Nuff said, right?

Super Fluff reader insert fic.

Enjoy!

The lamp in the second story window of your home is lit. The buttery glow of the little antique seems to reach out through the dreary October morning and burrow down into his chest. Heat kindles in the tender spot, and he smiles to himself as a swell of joy rushes through him. He’s dizzy with it, tickled to feel that a flush of warmth has made his cold skin prickle all the way from his head to his toes.

You left the light on for him. It is an assent to his presence. When you want uninterrupted sleep or space, you switch your lamp off. The two of you settled on this method of indication after your roommates began lodging complaints about the odd hours Jason came knocking. Because he sticks to a relatively nocturnal schedule, early AM visitation is his most common time-frame. So early, actually, that it could still be considered extremely late from the night before.

When the lamp in your window is on, he easily scales the ramshackle siding of the 3-bedroom you share with 5 people and slides in through the unlocked framework. It’s tricky for him to do so quietly this morning. He’s eager, and the chill air is thick with the kind of moisture that doesn’t have the altitude to be rain, nor the commitment to become a proper embankment of dense Gotham fog. He slips twice, and knocks himself a good one in the shoulder against the gutter as he struggles to keep his boots in place on the slick shingles of the overhang beneath your window. He makes it though, stripping off his muddy boots and heavy jacket so as not to trail any mess and mindful not to break the delicate reading light that acts as a literal beacon of consent which allows him such liberties as creeping into your bedroom.

The swollen, fond feeling inside of him redoubles when his eyes fall on you. He is still for a moment, gaze wandering from the nip in your waist up over the soft curve of your hip. He always takes a few seconds to admire you as you sleep. To have the intimate space of your bedroom offered to him, to be so trusted as to be welcomed into such a space while you are unconscious...

Every time, he relishes the opportunity to enjoy the faith and consideration that you extend to him by allowing these ludicrous early visits.

You always sleep half-curled on your side. Even swathed in a full comforter and an additional plush throw blanket, he can still make out parts of your figure which he admires. As he approaches your bedside, he reaches back into the pocket of his jeans, retrieving the present he’s carried with him all night through patrol.

You stir before he moves to wake you, and so he forgoes gently climbing into bed. He drops his weight behind you, pulling you back against him. The blankets unravel as he weasels his free hand beneath them to rub up and down your side. He nuzzles his face into your hair and hums a low, wordless greeting while you draw in a few loud, lazy lungfuls of air.

“Mmph,” you groan, tongue clumsy from sleep. It is a whiny, inarticulate sound, and it takes you a while to gather enough of your mind to form words. “Your hands are cold,” you say, flipping some of the blankets back over him. “So is your nose.”

You thread your fingers through his, dragging his hand up over your chest and tucking it beneath your chin. Doing so effectively tightens his arm around your middle, and you snuggle back toward him with a sweet, drowsy lack of inhibition. Every part of him is cold, you realize. Sort of damp too, at least his hair and his cargo pants. You nestle down against the hand at your throat, worried that he might get sick but too tired to verbally fuss.

Jason procrastinates until you doze off again, soaking in your easy warmth and affection while his other hand reflexively tightens in a pattern over your gift. He’s got it under your pillow now, having unthinkingly helped pose the both of you into your common shared sleeping arrangement. Nervous energy keeps him from resting as the doubts he’s had all week about his gift selection begin to plague his mind with a keener ferocity, now that the time to actually give it to you is here.

“Babe,” he whispers just above your ear. “Baby?” He gives you a firm squeeze before beginning to jostle you back and forth between his arm and torso. “Wake up, okay? I’ve got something for you.”

You take another one of your deep breaths, face scrunching into a malcontent contortion. “M’wake,” you mumble, clearly not.

He gives an airy chuckle, pressing a firm kiss to your temple before hauling the both of you upright. You hiss, fighting to remain within the toasty, comforting blankets. When you’re good and vertical with at least one eye peeped open, Jason maneuvers so as to be directly in front of you.

“Hey,” he grins, feeling suddenly foolish and a bit shy. You don’t look particularly happy, and he wonders if he should have allowed you to sleep. It’s your day, after all.

You respond simply, clearly somewhat confused. “Hey?”

Your voice is tender and soft, having worked through the gravelly portion of misuse and developed into a delicate, almost musical murmur. The sound gives him pause, and he goes back in to press another kiss to your hot, flushed cheek. He stays close for a moment, embracing you with only his nearness and not with his arms. When he leans back down on his haunches, he extends the bundle in his hand.

“I wanted to be the first to tell you and, ya’ know, the first one to give you a present.” You’re really smiling now, both beautiful eyes wide and sparkling in the warm lambency from the little lamp in the corner. “It’s like... four o’clock in the morning, so I’m pretty sure I get to be the first one who says it.” He grips your chin with the fingertips of one hand, tilting your face up and planting a proper kiss over your lips, heedless of morning breath. “Happy Birthday, Darlin’.”

He says this while your noses are still touching, eye to eye and smiling like the devil on a stormy Sunday morning. You go sheepish looking at him when he makes faces like that, with his eyes so bright and his teeth flashing all white and sharp in just the right places. Demurring, all too aware of the stale heat emanating from your tongue and suddenly quite nervous about something like morning breath, you drop your head and set the crest of your cheek gently against his jaw before moving back.

“Thank you, baby,” you mumble, leaning back against your headboard and plucking at the plain, hearty paper and butcher’s twine he used to wrap your present. “You’re definitely the first one to wish me a happy birthday on my actual birthday, for sure.”

It is a book, as you thought it’d be. This one is a well-worn paperback that looks to be of a scholastic persuasion. It’s cover is creased and torn, baring a wild artistic image that you recognize as an engraving of William Blake. Your head cocks to the side as you gently look the battered work over for a title. It’s on the spine, and you shoot Jason a curious look when you can’t quite make out what it says because of the deterioration and damage done by copious readings.

“Blake?” you question, wondering what in the world you were supposed to do with this gift.

Jason beams, practically puffing his chest he’s so proud that you recognized the artwork on the cover. “Yeah!”

“Uh, I don’t know much about Blake,” you confess, turning the book back and forth in your palms. “I mostly know his art and, well, the tiger poem.”

“Yeah..." he says, enthusiasm completely wilted. His sentences become halting as the room fills with the combined discomfort and awkward confusion of both you and your boyfriend. “I uh, I was kinda’ hoping you didn’t know much about him. He’s one of my favorites. Of the romantics, anyway. Really more like a proto-romantic. And he's not like my favorite, favorite author. Just a good one. Sorta’. He’s weird.”

Silence grows as you try to process your reaction to the gift. It is very early, mostly the middle of the night, after all. You’re not entirely sure what you think of it. You are grateful though, grateful that he thought of you and that he was so excited to wish you a happy birthday.

You catch his eye, and hug the book to your chest with a small smile. “Thank you,” you say, leaning forward a bit and deepening your expression so as to properly communicate your gratitude.

He nods, still obviously disappointed and perturbed. Just as you are about to reach forward to offer him a comforting touch, he extends his hand and gestures for the book. With only a bit of hesitation, you relinquish it back to him.

“This uh, this was the first book that Alfred bought for me after I moved into the manner.”

“Oh!” you say, his context suddenly tripling your interest in the paperback.

Jason rarely spoke about his past. You knew a rough outline of everything that had gone on, but certainly no details.

He doesn’t look up at you, cracking the book open and petting some of the pages with the gentlest brush of his fingertips. “Yeah. Alfred and sometimes, well actually, pretty often Bruce too... they’d read me poems from this book. I made them read it over and over again. Always a poem from The Songs of Innocence and then they’d flip all the way back to the back and find the corresponding work to the first poem in The Songs of Experience. I hated it when they didn’t read one right after the other, even though the collections were published separately. I felt like they were skipping a chapter or something if the poems weren’t read together.”

You don’t know if it’s the somewhat stunned expression on your face or the silence that presses him to explain, but you are enchanted as he continues on.

“Like ‘The Tyger’ for example, it has a companion poem called ‘The Lamb.' They were written to contextualize one another and question... well God, basically. Intelligent design. ‘The Lamb’ focuses on purity, childhood innocence, and guileless trust in the watchful design of God. ‘The Tyger’ though, the one from The Songs of Experience, it details the hitches and complications in believing that the same God from ‘The Lamb’ would create such good, delicate, innocent creatures and then force them to live in the same world as monsters and fear and man-eaters.”

“Wow.” You give the book another sly glance as it rests in his hands, feeling that you perhaps underestimated the contents and, certainly, that you underestimated the emotional connection Jason has to it.

He chuckles again, humorlessly this time, still not looking at you. “Yeah. I stole it out of Bruce’s penthouse over a year ago. He um- he had a bunch of stuff from when I was a kid moved there after... what happened.”

You didn’t think it was possible, but your eyes find a way to go even wider. Jason never, never talks to you about that.

Never.

You learned about it from Tim. And the newspaper, of course.

Jason wants to shove the book down his throat. This is the first birthday in your relationship, and he ruined it with a dumb gift because he’s a dumb idiot. When he saw your face, looking down at the stupid freaking poetry book with zero surprise or delight, it’s like he started word vomiting. He can’t get it to quit, and he can’t look at you while this comes out of his mouth.

“I thought he moved it there to, I dunno’, forget about me? Keep me off of his mind. Dick told me though,” Jason pauses to take a deep breath, obviously getting overwhelmed. “He told me a while after I broke in and saw so much of my stuff in there that Bruce had uh- he’d gotten real mean after. That he couldn’t be around anyone. Not even Alfred. He moved out of the manor with my things, and he kept them at the penthouse to visit them or something, I guess? It was a weird explanation. This is all weird. I’m so sorry. I should have gotten you a newer copy or maybe just-”

“No!” You lurch forward, snatching the book out of his hand and wrapping your arms around him. “No,” you say more calmly, touched beyond belief that he would give you what amounted to a piece of himself as a gift.

“I love it. It’s perfect, and I love it.”

He puts his weight behind the hug, folding around you and squeezing so firmly that your breath is short. “I love you,” he grumbles into your hair, still unhappy with himself for derailing this gesture so thoroughly.

“I love you too,” you say, tapping at his elbow as a request for him to lighten his hold. He does, and you lean back with an infectious, dazzling smile. You hold the book up, eager and no longer self-conscious or sleepy. “Will you read me some of the poems?”

“Uh,” his face goes bright red, the blush running all the way to the tips of his ears. “I don’t really know how well I can read aloud, babe. But, I mean, it’s your birthday. If you want to pick a few, I’ll give it a try.”

With a giddy nod, you flip open the book to find an inscription in red ink on the title page:

Happy 20th Birthday, my Sunny Girl!

This book is full of one man’s ideas about life, beauty, and the things that he thought were worth protecting.

None of them are half as beautiful or worthy as you.

Love, J.

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