Clever Swine

Rodzina: It's the Polish word for family. Ojciec is how you say father and matka is mother. Brother is aptly called brat and I had three of them. Three bracia and one siostra, which means sister. Dziadek is grandfather, babcia is grandmother, and if you toss a pra in front of either word, you've got yourself a great-grandparent. The only one of my great-grandparents I ever knew in life was my prababcia on my mother's side, but we just called her Nanni.

And when I was growing up in the 1980s, all ten of us lived in the same house and I couldn't stand being related to a single one of them.