Poczta Polska

Today I went to the post office. It's very convenient, ground floor of my building. This is also where I go to pay my gas and electric bills and if I needed to, purchase some fashion magazines, devotional cards and candles and assorted sundries. I had to send my Deklaracja for ZUS (health insurance, one of the many things I now have to deal with myself now that I am my own company; I keep asking how this makes things easier and have yet to get a good answer), and it had to be sent by registered mail. What that means is filling out a (blessedly) small form with my address and the address of the recipient, handing that over with the envelope, and receiving my inevitable stamp on the form for my records. But I had been led astray by the secretary at Profi: through a miscommunication, I had switched the addresses, put mine in the recipient box and vice versa. Not a big deal, but it entailed a discussion in Polish with the kindly gray-haired woman behind the counter, and that was painful on both sides. I was also acutely aware of the 6 people lined up behind me waiting while she explained to me how to fill out a form that's about as simple and straightforward as you'll ever get, especially in Poland. There wasn't any particular animosity, more of a generalized atmosphere of impatience. Flustered, I finally managed to fill it out correctly, and although numbers are what I understand best, I was completely unable to understand how much she said it was. Slowly, and still kindly (we've done this before, she and I) she repeated it several times until I succeeded in counting out the correct amount.
The important realization I came to here, was a better understanding of the immigrant experience, anywhere I guess, but especially in America. I've heard so many times people make derogatory remarks about recent immigrants, and much of it revolves around their language skills. Native speakers of English, they express frustration, impatience and condescension to and about those who are learning it. And I understand that too, having worked in customer service in places with a lot of tourist traffic: ordering a coffee becomes an ordeal that you'd rather not have to go through, you're just trying to make it to the end of your shift as painlessly as possible and trying to explain what a frappuccino is to someone who doesn't know the word for "ice" is a real pain in the ass.
What I understand now though, is how it feels on the other side. I've traveled a lot, and my ignorance of whatever the local language was in whatever country I was in never really bothered me. I was just passing through and usually in places frequented by other tourists, so English was often spoken and transactions were largely about food and lodging and travel. But living here, I have to do so many more things, things I need help with, or when help is unavailable, on my own. Like going to the post office. And I'm 32, college-educated, a teacher, and when, as today, I have trouble performing basic, simple tasks, I feel like a 5 year-old kid who's been dropped on his head too many times. Ignorant and stupid. A check-out clerk at a store wanted to double-bag my groceries and asked me to lift them so she could get the second one around the first: "Can you lift that, please?" had to be mimed to me. A guy from the electric company showed up at my door the other day, and ended up yelling at me; all I understood was "new contract", but nothing else. Did I have a new contract? Did I need a new contract? Did someone else have a new contract? Who knew? I sure didn't.
My point is this: America is a nation of immigrants, always has been, hopefully always will be. I believe that to be a good thing, a large part of our strength, the source of our innovation and drive. But there are so many people who look down on those who arrived after them, who don't understand, within a generation or two, why the recent ones can't get it together. Why they can't fit in, why they can't do simple things the rest of us take for granted. Conveniently forgetting that their parents or their grandparents were just like that when they came, confused by systems no one explains to them, where going to the store or the post office is a major challenge, where everyone else seems in possession of a secret power that you just don't have.
The daily embarrassment you deal with just to accomplish the basic errands and chores of living, the self-consciousness every time you speak, knowing it sounds as loud and jarring as a trumpet blast at a violin recital.
It's not easy. Which is why I think more Americans should go live somewhere else for a year, to get that experience, that we don't forget our immigrant roots, and to gain some compassion and patience for those newly arrived. We're trying, we're learning, and that's all anyone should ask.