Displaced persons

I was thinking about missing my granddaughters and what I would like to tell them. It brought to mind a memory from my childhood.

I grew up in S.Ft.Mitchell Ky, a suburb of Cincinnati. The local Catholic church, Blessed Sacrament, was large. Originally it was all white plaster. During my youth, the inside was painted. I sang in the boys choir from the time I entered school until the 6th grade.

There was also a 1-8 school. I went there 1-6. Latin School was an accelerated program of 4 yrs that replaced 7-12.

During my youth, the school was significantly expanded to handle the children of the "baby boom". The teachers were Benedictine nuns, though lay women were added to the staff to handle the doubling of classes during the 1950s. The convent was next to the church, attached by a short walkway.

The "maintenance person" was Mr Barczak. He lived with his family in a tree-shaded large house behind the church parking lot. He and his family were "displaced persons" from Poland -- what today we would call refugees. (For a story called The Displaced Person, see the works of Flannery O'Connor, a famous GA author. It was made into a movie in 1977.)

While working around the church and school, he would sometimes be accompanied by several of his children. What brought this story fragment to mind is that he would talk to his children. I don't think he was just "baby sitting" them -- I think he was rearing them. This is what I miss about my grandchildren -- simply talking to them. At the moment we are distant figures in the other's lives. Intimacy grows out of immediacy, both in presence and in presence of mind. With just the latter, groundedness is missing.