Babcia Cried

BABCIA’S TEARS OF JOY

Babcia cried. I have never met anyone who could shed copious tears of happiness like Babcia could. 

Babcia cried when Myron Floren performed one of her favorite songs on his accordion on the Lawrence Welk Show. 

Babcia cried every September when a new Miss America was crowned. I was allowed to stay up late into the night until the crowning moment. As soon as Bert Parks began to sing, “There she is…” I would race to the phone and dial Babcia. 

“Did you cry? Did you cry?” I asked. 

But she did, of course, and I could hear her sniffling over the phone. We would then discuss whether we picked the winner, but regardless of whether the winner was her favorite or not, Babcia cried. 

Babcia cried when she shared Oplatki, the Polish Christmas wafer, with her grandchildren before her Christmas Eve Wigilia dinner. 

Babcia cried when she first saw me in my wedding dress, and again when she held her great grandchildren. 

One time her happy tears caught me unexpectedly. One afternoon in the autumn of 1972, I visited her, unannounced, at her home on Mt. Ephraim Avenue in Camden where she had remained after my Dziadek passed away. The grocery store they owned in the front of the house was long vacant, so I let myself in through the alley gate to the side door. When Babcia answered my knock, I said, with awful pronunciation, a phrase I had memorized. 

“Czy Babcia jest w domu?” (Is Grandmother at home?)

She hugged me tight, and her tears flowed. And flowed. 

“Babcia, why are you crying?”

“Because my granddaughter just spoke in Polish to me!” she blubbered. 

And that’s what Deb Said…