My mother had an almost spiritual connection to her grandmother. Arguably, her grandmother was the only connection my mother had to the rest of her family because the Great Depression split up many of the siblings and they were never able to reconnect. When my mom was young, she was able to try homemade Povitica bread. Her grandmother always asked for the recipe, but the family that she still spoke to never passed it on. It had become a tradition to give a false recipe and then laugh at the resulting failure. About 6 years ago, my mom went on the hunt for the real recipe. None of my family members either had the recipe or were willing to share it with her, so she took to Google. Even then, it was difficult to find the recipe she was looking for because of the variations within the spellings and styles of the bread throughout eastern European nations. Povitica bread somehow became synonymous with my mother's family history; much like the bread, we still do not know their exact origins (or even the correct spelling of her name). My great-grandmother spoke Polish as a child in America because she lived in a Polish neighborhood and claimed to be Polish. My mother and grandmother argue that she was actually Austrian/Slovenian and only claimed to be Polish because of discrimination in the Chicago suburb where her family had settled. We probably will never know the whole history of Great-Grandma Suzie, but at least we were able to figure out that my family made Polish Povitica.

– Emerald Callahan

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