Unless I want to be an Edie, Big or Little, in an ersatz-colonial Grey Gardens,…
Widow’s Weeds 17: Sentimental Journey
Vilnius—in fact, all of Lithuania—is a constant experience of déjà vu. Or perhaps more accurately, jau matytas. Every day seemed a trip down Memory Lane. October 6 I hadn’t planned to be ensconced in my room at Bookinn B&B by that day, but I had fled the pas...
Widow’s Weeds 16: Reminders of What Matters
I expected the village of Žiežmariai to be a quick stop. My target was the church, St James the Apostle, where so many Tomkuses had been baptized, married and seen off to the hereafter. The wooden prayer house those ancestors would have known was replaced in 1924 by...
Widow’s Weeds 15: In Search of the Tomkuses of Miežonys
The plan was to spend a couple days in the place where Dan’s paternal grandfather, Kazimir Tamkus, came from. Kazimir and his brother Petrus died in the Diamond Mining disaster in Scranton, Pennsylvania in December 1914. Family facts and fancies died with them when...
Widow’s Weeds 14: Just Don’t
When I traveled with Dan, my chief focus was his comfort. Car rentals, hotel choices, itineraries: all decisions reflected our very different tourism styles. Inefficiencies, inconveniences and the unexpected don’t rattle me but they could easily discommode him. Rent...