pigs and chocolate

I was very excited to celebrate my first International Women's Day in a country that actually acknowledged it. As soon as Mychal arrived, I began dropping blatant hints about the box of chocolates and flowers, that, as a man, he was required to give his wife and mother of his child. Alas.

The day dawned beautiful and snowy; yesterday's fat flakes had accumulated into a thick blanket of snow. Branches were iced with a generous ribbon of snow, buses chortled down the street in thick snowy coats. Snow was still falling when we woke--masses of tiny flakes hurrying down as if pressed for time, not the leisurely thick flakes of yesterday.

But, the disappearance of our keys interrupted the day of pastries, ethnic museum, puppet theater and bon bons that we'd planned. After spending all morning in vain trying to get hold of our landlords, we decided to take our stir-crazy child out into the fresh air. I carried Axel and Mychal carried the things we really didn't want to disappear (our computers), and we struck out for downtown. But we only made it half-way there before my guilt over leaving the apartment unattended while our keys roamed at large with an unknown individual got the better of me. So we returned; not quite trudging up the snowy hill, because it was really quite beautiful, but definitely working hard enough to feel it in our hip flexors.

And then we waited... And waited, with a brief interlude while I sought a hardware store (closed on Sundays) and lunch (yes, more pastries and dried sausage). And waited until, finally, we got hold of the landlord who showed up at five pm, on his day off, leaving his lovely wife to celebrate International Women's Day by herself, while he changed the lock to our apartment.

Luckily, he was rather quick and we were able to go out to forge for dinner. Our plan had been to eat at a restaurant a short walk from our building; we'd passed this place several times on our trips to the park and market, stopping each time to check out the seven pigs, stuffed muskrat and miniature water wheel inside. Each time we stopped, we waved to the servers who, invariably, folded napkins in the empty restaurant. We never saw a single customer inside and joked that we'd better eat there soon, before it closed.

We'd prepped Axel in advance for our special dinner out, hoping that the novelty of the pigs and water wheel would keep him entertained while we ate. But that was not to be: the place was packed, the host scarcely acknowledged my query about dinner, interrupting me to ask if we had reservations. Oops. We should have known the holiday was a serious thing: since Thursday, we've watched people load up on flowers, chocolates and liquor. And that generations of family would get together in restaurants to celebrate the wives, mothers daughters on their day.

We walked further, this time Mychal carrying Axel, peeking in places to gauge whether there was an empty table. Eventually we found the Krakow Café, where shiny red hair, tight purple sweater dresses, sparkly maroon sequins shimmered and blended as three, then five, grandmas danced in the middle of the room.