I wish people wouldn’t think Poland is hidden somewhere in the Russian tundra.
Why do I have to live in such a nowhere?
I was talking to @WeAreSBNN on Twitter, asking if they had any t-shirts for people who are neither straight, nor narrow ;) you know, to support the cause. They said they’re planning on making a suitable t-shirt. I said cool, do you ship overseas? Yeah, sure, to all major countries. The list is on their site. And of course it doesn’t include Poland… so I’ll have to ship to a friend in UK or Ireland instead and they will have to ship it to me next. Twice the price.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the whole campaign, I support it wholeheartedly, I love the guy (or gal?) behind their Twitter account, so nice and kind, and I really get why they don’t ship to Poland – no point if there’s only me wanting it or even knowing about the campaign, right? I get it, really.
I just wish Poland wasn’t such far end of the world. I just wish we were recognized as one of the biggest (both by area and population) country in EU, with strong economy (the only one in EU holding steady without negative GDP during recent world crisis and recession) and awesome culture, worth looking into.
I wish people at least knew where Poland is. The number of times when I had to point it on the map or explain to people where it is and that no, we don’t have grizzly bears walking on streets and we do have TV and Internet and everything (I’m exaggerating only a little), is alarming, really.
I wish we weren’t ignored. But I know it’s not gonna change anytime soon. So I just have to get used to being ignored.
Music is poetry too.
It’s Thursday, so it’s my day to showcase a little of poetry. Today it’s gonna be a song. Not even from the genre that in Poland is called “sang poetry”, just so beautiful that I can’t stop listening to it.
This is a song performed by a Polish group called Bajm, with Beata Kozidrak as a lead singer. The song is probably the most beautiful thing about motherhood that I have ever heard.
Bajm
“Dwa serca, dwa smutki” / “Two hearts, two sorrows”
Rośniesz jak młody buk na moich ramionach /You’re growing like a young beech* on my arms
Jak drzewo, którego nikt, nikt nie pokona / Like a tree that no one, no one can defeat
Dałam ci wolę istnienia / I gave you the will of existence
Dałam ci siłę tworzenia / I gave you the power of creation
Nowy nieznany szlak nad twoją głową / The new, unknown path over your head
Może jest tylko snem, a może koroną / Maybe it’s just a dream or maybe a crown
Zostań więc Bogiem i drzewem / So become God and a tree
Między mną, ziemią, a niebem / Between me, the Earth and the Heavens**
Ref.: / Chorus:
Więc teraz serca mam dwa, smutki dwa / So now I have two hearts, two sorrows
I miłość po kres, i radość do łez / And love to the end, and joy to the tears
Wieczory długie i złe / Evenings long and bad
Krótkie dnie, więc całuj mnie częściej, / Short days, so kiss me more often
Bo nie wiem jak będzie / Because I don’t know what is going to be
Ojciec Twój pędzi-wiatr, uwieść mnie zdołał / Your father, road runner, has managed to seduce me
Tulił jak cenny skarb w swoich ramionach / He held me in his arms like a treasured gold
Dałam mu wolę istnienia / I gave him the will of existence
Dałam mu siłę tworzenia / I gave him the power of creation
Ref.: / Chorus: x3
*In Polish “buk” and “bóg” are pronounced the same way; “buk” is beech and “bóg” means god.
** In Polish “ziemia” can mean either the floor or the Earth, as well as “niebo” can mean the sky or the Heaven.
The Blessed One.
I was looking at my old blog. It’s still out there. It covers the period from 2004 to 2008, though the last two years are very sketchy. I was a teenager then. And all is there: my tears, my depression, my suicide almost-attempt, my teenage little problems and little joys, and my stupid, banal, childish reflexions. Today I went back to the archive, to April 2005. Do you know what I wrote in the evening on April 2nd?
I wrote:
I was waiting for that miracle. I believed in it.
God, you took a man who meant too much…
There are no tears in me now.
And the next day:
“Jesus, I trust in You.*”
And the next day:
I’ll permit myself to quote Wisława Szymborska:
“Someone was always, always here,
then suddenly disappeared
and stubbornly stays disappeared”
And then I went to Krakow for the funeral. And it was something really amazing. I can’t believe it’s been so many years already.
I still feel as if He’s right there, beside me, waiting for something.
And sometimes I can’t help but feel that I disappoint Him. But then again I remember something like the sermon I heard today. My cousin’s First Communion was marked by a priest that preached in his sermon that we shan’t vote for people who want to pass the In Vitro bill, because it’s not christian. Moreover, he implied that people who are not Catholic are worthless and halfwits. I literally got up and left the church. Couldn’t listen to him.
And so there are constantly two images of Church in me: one with our Pope’s face, reassuring, tolerant, ecumenical; and the other one with a face of angered Father Editor with his Maybach, shouting invectives at people who don’t agree with him. Sadly, there is many, many, many more priests with the second face on. Thus, I am not sure if I even want to be a part of Catholic Church anymore. (There is more to that, but it’s a part of the reason I tell people that I am a Catholic With Doubts or a Theist.)
* For those of you who haven’t heard about the Painting of Saint Faustyna Kowalska: click!
I feel weird.
I was born 22 years ago today, at around 6 AM, in a hospital in Chorzów, where I lived until I moved to Kraków for studies. I was supposed to be a birthday gift for my mum. She turned 34 on April 25th. But I guess I couldn’t wait to see the outside world. I was also bent back in a weird way, so my mum had to have a C-section. She has scars to this day. I feel a little guilty for that.
It’s weird. When I was little, I though 22 is old. Then I though it was merely adult. Now when I reached that age myself, I don’t feel adult at all. I still feel like I’m a child, vulnerable and helpless. And crazy, but that’s a good thing. I hope I’ll never lose this childish craziness, this joy of life and interest in the world. But still… I wonder whether I will still feel like that – vulnerable and all – when I’m independent. Right now it’s my parents who provide for me, but I am hoping to find a job after I finish the studies (5 years in Poland, so 2 more years for me) and become financially independent.
(By the way, recently I got a great opportunity; I sent my applications to some translation bureaus and I got a response! I have a job interview on Tuesday and if I succeed, I’ll have an internship! That’s a great start on the way to career. I mean, you need a lot of experience to get a good job after studies, and getting an internship is hard. So I am really happy, though also nervous. What if I mess up the interview?!)
Anyway, I feel weird.
A meeting with poetry: Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska
I decided to start a new cycle of posts. Every Thursday I will try to post a poem and, if necessary, a translation of it. It won’t be limited only to Polish poets, but there surely will be some. Like today. I present to you my very favorite, though very, very short poem of Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, “Love”. I haven’t found the proper translation online, so I did it myself. Excuse me for any mistakes and my sloppiness, translating poems is very hard. (Obviously, I can only translate the content, I am not that good to translate the rhythm and rhyme and assonance and all of that stuff.)
Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska
| Miłość Nie widziałam Cię już od miesiąca I nic. Jestem może bledsza, trochę śpiąca, trochę bardziej milcząca. Lecz widać można żyć bez powietrza. |
Love I haven’t seen you for a month now And nothing. I am maybe paler, a little sleepy, a little more silent. But apparently you can live without the air! |
How do you like it?
Knight in a Shiny Armour.
Me and my roommate, we have our own knight in shiny armour. He comes to the rescue of princesses imprisoned in their own rooms and saves them from the floods. His name’s Maciek and he’s our neighbor from below.
First I was locked up in my own apartment. Our lock is constructed in the way so that you can lock it from outside and no one from inside can open it. I have no idea why and what for, but it’s what it is. And my roommate, while leaving for the spring break, has locked me from outside. I didn’t even know till she called me; I had an exam the next day, so I stayed home, studying. (Yes, it is like that in here. The exam session can last even a month and so there is no spring break, like for me this last February, while my roommate got to go home.) I couldn’t go out and I had to drop the keys to my neighbor so that he could open me from outside.
Then, few weeks ago, my roommate locked herself in her room. I am still not sure how, since she doesn’t have a lock, only kind of catch. There is no key, you just push the knob down and the door opens. Only, this time, it didn’t. It was morning, I was already awake, because I had some classes coming up. (And I was trying to be a good girl and go.)
I tried to open the door.
Nothing.
We both tried.
Nothing.
I pulled out a door knob.
Nothing.
At this point Bastet called the owner of our apartment (we only rent it). The owner’s name is Paweł. She was sleepy. She didn’t realize she was talking to Paweł… only not the one we needed. She was talking to her friend from classes. It wasn’t till after he promised to come and got on the bus when she realized her mistake. Well. She was really sleepy.
Paweł didn’t do much, so after the call to our owner (the right Paweł, this time), our neighbor came to the rescue. With a drill. He drilled a whole in the catch of the knob, but couldn’t open the door anyway. Fortunately, while he was gone for a moment, Paweł (Bastet’s friend) took a tent wire he had in the pocket of his jacket (I know, normal people don’t carry around things like that; then again, I never claimed that my merry bunch is normal) and somehow managed to open the damn door. Bastet was liberated! The main thanks, though, are due to our good neighbor and his drill.
No, Bastet didn’t get a new door knob. I think she’s a little paranoid about them now.
And yesterday the faucet in our kitchen broke. Bastet was home alone, I was at my parent’s when it happened. It just sort of started leaking more and more. Bastet had to turn off the hot water so that it only dripped a little. Today, she went to Castorama to buy a new faucet, but of course we, two girls, weren’t able to install it ourselves. And yet again our brave neighbor came to our rescue. He removed the old one and – with some difficulties – installed the new faucet and it works. (Finally we can wash that pile of dishes.)
As a thank-you gift, he received an original, Lithuanian Šakotis the first time (after the lock) and now we got him a Guinness, Heineken, Desperados and Tyskie (we heard he liked beer and we know nothing about beers, so we chose four that seemed best. Not that we don’t drink alcohol, just not beer). It was all packed in a bag with pink roses printed on it. (We loved it. And yes, we know we’re five degrees of crazy.)
Thus, our neighbor became our official Knight in a Shiny Armour. Basically, we’re alive thanks to him. (Well, okay. Maybe not alive, but certainly we owe him a lot.) It’s good to have a neighbor like that!
April 10th.
It was Saturday. I stayed in Krakow for the weekend. I was asleep. I usually catch up with sleeping during weekends. I was waking up. I heard a low buzz. SMS. My eyelids seemed heavy when I lifted them to see who’s that. Ireth, of course. I hardly ever get texts from someone lese, at least in comparison. If they come very early or very late, I usually push reading them until later. But not this time. This time I was already waking up, so I opened the message.
“Zabiło nam prezydenta!”, said the message. “It killed our president”. I distinctly remember thinking: What the hell? April Fools was ten days ago. (I hate April Fools. Someone fooled me once into believing that a close friend died. I was just a kid. I don’t like that day since then.) I thought about ignoring it and going back to sleep, but something inside told me to check it out, just to be sure. So I got up and turned on Hotch. (Hotch is the name of my PC. I am that person. I give names to inanimate objects.) I sat in my chair, in nothing but the pajamas, and opened onet.pl. I usually don’t use it, because since few years ago it’s similar more to a cheap tabloid than a real journal or news service. But for the quick search it’s not that bad.
It wasn’t black yet. They changed the colours to black and white later. But it was there. The news. A plane crash in Smoleńsk. President’s dead. Or is he? How many victims? Did the plane burn? How many people were on board? Who was there? Someone we knew? Are there any survivors? Is it really one hundred dead? Or maybe fifty? Or eighty? The information contradicted one another. It was all very chaotic. I don’t remember what was happening, not in the chronological order anyway. I remember commenting it all on Twitter. I remember sending an SMS to pay for a day streaming of TVN24, Polish version of CNN. I remember news presenters in tears, their voices rough, eyes wide with disbelief. I didn’t blame them. I couldn’t believe it myself.
I remember the then speaker of the Sejm (the lower chamber of the Parliament) giving his statement, his voice stiff, angular, husky. The commenters thought he was emotionless. I thought he was just shocked, like we all were. Suddenly all has changed. He had to take a great responsibility on his shoulders and not after long campaign and elections, but right there, right now. He just coped with it a little differently than we’d expect. Doesn’t make him compassionless.
I remember the sirens. I remember the minute of silence, when all the trams and buses and ordinary cars stopped and just stood there.
I remember people whispering on the streets, eyes wide opened, tears. White and red flags with black ribbons. I wore a black ribbon too. All week.
I remember my mom saying over the phone that she has met Mrs. Bochenek on occasions. I remember staring at the victim’s list. Mrs. Jaruga-Nowacka, the woman who had done so much for the feminist and LGTB situation. Former President Kaczorowski. Military people. Members of Parliament. Senators. The Russian interpreter (this touched me a lot, since I want to be an interpreter myself). Officers of BOR, the government’s protection bureau. Even Lech and Maria Kaczynska, though I didn’t vote for him and did not support him. He wasn’t the best president, but didn’t deserve to die. No one deserved to die. Why did they? We may never find out. But one thing I know: I don’t believe in any conspiracy theory. Everything else I’ll accept.
Sunday. The day after the crash. I had a meeting with friends planned for weeks. We didn’t cancel. We went to the cafe called Cieplarnia, it’s on the Bracka Street. We didn’t know… there were some people at the nearest table. We weren’t very quiet. It’s impossible to be sad or quiet if you’re in such jolly company. We didn’t know… A very pale, sad-looking woman, that one of my friends categorized as “some politician”, though she didn’t even know if she was local or national, asked us to turn it down a little. We didn’t want to disturb them, so we left. It wasn’t until then that we realized. The cafe was directly beneath the parliamentary bureau of late Zbigniew Wasserman. One of the Smoleńsk victims.
I remember that we were to have a test with Madame K., our French lecturer. She didn’t do it. She said she understood that nobody felt like studying this weekend. She was really great about that. I think she experienced it almost as much as any of us. After all, she’s lived in Poland for years.
I remember when all different heads of state were promising to get there for the funeral. Somehow, I found it soothing. Just a little. But then, the volcano. You remember that, right? And now, there’s a crack. Why Saakashvili, the President of Georgia, though he came late, was able to get there and Obama or Sarkozy or Merkel weren’t? They were all in US for the summit. So how was it that Saakashvili managed to do it and almost nobody else did? Was it security issues? Or… simply an excuse? I don’t know. I don’t think it matters now. I’m just wondering.
I remember that despite the fact that I thought – and still think – that burying Kaczynkis on Wawel was wrong on many levels, I went there the day of the funeral. It was raining. It was cold. We stood there, at the foot of the Wawel Hill, on a square where the cross is. The cross was erected years ago in commemoration of Katyń victims. Since that day, it’s never going to be only Katyń massacre anymore. It’ll be also the Smoleńsk tragedy. The double meaning will always be there from now on.
We stood there, by the cross, in rain. There was a big screen nearby, so we could watch the ceremony. I don’t remember much of it. It was cold and wet. And sad.
This is what I want to remember. This is what I want to mourn. It was a tragedy that shouldn’t happen. It should have stayed in the safe imagination of writers. (Did I mention I wrote something very similar not long before it happened? It still gives me the chills…) But it did happen. What I don’t understand is how this week of tragedy, a week of national mourning turned into this year… this year of bartering, politicizing every aspect of it, this year of egoism, inflated self-esteem, lost values, fights, partial, partisan tricks, media wars. It was awful. We have enough. We don’t want it anymore. I don’t even want to write about it. ENOUGH! Let us mourn our lost compatriots in peace. And then let us get back to our lives. Let’s start to live our lives, to prepare our future. Let us remember the past and not live it!
Let us move on. Please.
The black Volga.
Have you heard a story about the black Volga? It is said to roam around cities and kidnap little children, especially those who wander alone. My grandma used to scare me by telling me this story when I was a kid. I didn’t know what Volga was, but I assumed it was a car. And of course, it was a luxurious limousine popular during communist times.
The story about black Volga has been around since the early ’60s, I think. My mom told me her mom used to scare her with it too, and my mom was born in ’55. When I was a child, in early to mid ’90s, Volgas became very rare, because suddenly the market has been opened and Western cars started to be imported in great numbers. I’ve never seen a Volga – or I didn’t notice anyway. And I would notice if I saw one, at least in the last five years, ’cause while I don’t exactly love cars, I like them enough to be interested what make or model is this or that car.
My grandma was the one who told me the black Volga story, because she didn’t want me to wander the streets alone (I was always very keen of it), she wanted me to stay with my family or friends when I played outside. But, while I didn’t know back then nothing about Volgas, I knew enough about Mercedes and BMWs.
Because the story returned at full speed in ’90s. Only it was no longer the black Volga, but the black Mercedes or black BMW. They either kidnapped children or young and pretty girls. It’s been also said that it was the Satan himself who drove the car and he asked people about the hour and they would die at that exact hour he asked about… and many more frightening stories.
The funny thing being, my father owned a black BMW. Well, it wasn’t exactly black – the color was called, if I recall, “dark dolphin”, but don’t ask me why. It was very, very dark, almost black, but there was a metallic edge to it. But it could easily pass for black. It was rare to have the car that good back then – even if my father bought it used – and all the children on my yard were envious and scared of it. Even more so, because my dad always wore a black suit and had a beard… also because when he was angry, he yelled a lot. All this made them very anxious of him. My not-quite-cousin-but-almost told me once that he was always scared of my dad. Huh. Who wasn’t? I certainly was!
Anyway, I don’t know why this story came to me today. I thought I’d share. Do you have similar urban legends where you live? Were you ever really scared because of something your parents or other people told you? Share it with me :)
I feel blessed.
I watched the movie “Karol” today, both parts. Of course, I’ve seen it, like, ten times already. And every single time I’m starting to cry three minutes after the beginning and not stopping until five minutes after the end. The combined emotional charge of watching the life of our great Pope and the history in the background – especially in the first part – just overwhelms me.
This Man was always present in my life, since my birth; I even remember a recurring dream I had as a child, in which the Pope was coming to me, to my home, and giving me a little, metal box containing something very precious. I do not remember what this something was, but I do remember the feeling that accompanied it – the overwhelming joy, mixed with embarrassment and shyness. I remember wondering: why me? I never found out – every time I wanted to ask that question, the dream would end and I’d wake up.
I always regretted not having the possibility to attend one of His pilgrimages to Poland. I was too little to go by myself and my parents weren’t religious enough to take me. But I always knew He was there – a soothing presence, a bright spot. I was very religious child, back then.
I remember the day He died. I was praying for Him to get better. I knew the world without Him wouldn’t be the same. I was doing something on the computer when I found out – I read it somewhere on the Internet. I stared blankly at the screen for couple of minutes. I couldn’t believe it. God wouldn’t take this great man… would He? Then I started crying. The whole week was kind of blurry. Hidden behind the fog of tears. I remember national grieving and mourning. I remember going to school wearing a little white ribbon. It’s customary to wear the black one – but it was special. He was “the man in white”. He was a symbol of hope. And so we wore white ribbons.
For his funeral, I went to Kraków. I was living with my parents in Chorzów back then, and such a trip on my own was rather big for me. Kraków was a special city. It’s where He lived and taught, and served. Many people came to Kraków that day. There is a large field, called Błonia, where all major events that require big space for big crowds are held. That day the big screens were put there, and the altar for the mass. More than eight thousand people gathered there to watch the funeral held in Rome on the screens and celebrate the mass. There was this one moment that I won’t ever forget; eight thousand people kneeling on the ground, inclining their heads, hands folded, saying nothing… I heard nothing but the light breathing. The silence was almost absolute; it was an amazing moment.
This was almost six years ago. I didn’t even notice where all this time disappeared. I was fifteen, almost sixteen back then. Now I am almost twenty-two. I’ve grown a lot. I am no longer this religious, blind little girl. There are things I consider bad in the Church. It disappoints me a lot. I resolved that I disagree on many issues with the views of Vatican. I think the Pope was wrong in some things. (Let alone this new guy, whom I wished luck at the beginning, knowing he would never be “the Pope”, just “a pope”. I really gave him a chance, though; I even was there when he came to Poland, on this same field in Kraków. But he disappointed me too many times now.) But He was right most of the times. He brought so much good to this world! And so I was joyful when I heard about His imminent beatification on May 1st. I respect Him for what He’s done and love Him for how He was. I feel blessed that I could be a part of all this – that He was and still is a part of my life.
But the movie doesn’t show only a great man. It shows also a reality, His reality. History. My history. And I feel blessed because I live in a free country. I don’t have to live in fear. Fear of war… fear of oppression… fear of hunger… fear of poverty… I get to make my own decisions, I get to do with my life whatever I want. I get to cherish my life with my family and my friends. I don’t have to sacrifice anything. I can, but I don’t have to.
My grandmother was seven when Germans assailed Poland in 1939. She was 13 when the War ended. I don’t know what she’s been through. She never speaks of it. But then she had to endure the Communism and her own unhappy marriage. It was usual, patriarchal, poor family. My grandfather worked at the mine. He spent most of his salary on games – he was a gambler – and alcohol. My grandmother stayed home, taking care of her two children, my mom and my uncle. “Home” was an apartment in one of the famous Silesian “familoki”. It had one room and a kitchen. The toilet was outside, in the corridor, shared with another family. There was no bathroom. The only room was divided in two smaller ones; there was no wall added, just a big wardrobe. They didn’t have central heating, they had a steel stove. They had to bring coal all the way up (the apartment is on the fifth floor). They used a big washtub – no bathroom, remember? In the hardest times, they ate from one bowl; this is why my mom still eats everything so fast. If you weren’t fast, someone else was and you couldn’t eat enough. My grandfather abused his family. I don’t know if he ever touched them – it’s not exactly something you can ask – but I know he abused them mentally. Sometimes words hurt harder than worst bruises.
I was blessed, because I never knew poverty. Hunger. War. Oppression. My little problems now seem just that – little problems. Nothing I can’t get through. If my grandma could get through all this, why shouldn’t I get through whatever life has prepared for me? I have my family and friends. I have money – not much, maybe, but enough to live with dignity. I have education – something my grandmother didn’t have. And most of all, I have freedom. Freedom that I haven’t worked for; freedom gained with tears and blood of those who came before me. And for that, I feel, I have the moral responsibility to carry on that freedom to others. To perfect it in every way possible. To make it universal. To make other people feel as blessed as I do.
The greatest pillar of my life.
I resemble my mother physically. We both have blond hair (though mine is darker) and bright eyes (though my mom’s are light blue, while mine are indefinite grey with a hint of blue and green). My features match hers, too, though, of course, not exactly; our voices are so similar that very often when I answer the phone, the person on the other end thinks she or he is talking to my mother. I am much taller than she is and when she was my age, she was rather skinny, with long, thick hair – very beautiful indeed, no wonder that my dad has fallen in love with her. Now we are both rather round, though her figure was always more like an hour-glass than mine.
My mom, me and my dad in Egypt this last September.
Mentally, I’m more like my father. I don’t scream as much as he does, but when I get angry, then I really get angry. Which doesn’t happen very often. I’m more a “hurt” person than “anger” person. But anyway, like my dad I go to sleep very late and hate getting up early. We both are rather tech savvy, we both like good, heated discussion about politics, we both hate shopping. We love books (and it’s a trait that we share with my mom and my brother as well) and we both have a flair in writing. I’m worried that my handwriting will eventually become just as intelligible as my dad’s. We both do everything at the last possible minute and work best under pressure (this little characteristic is what irritates my mom a lot). We both are ambitious. We both consider other things than cleaning or making dinner our priorities (which irritates my mom as well; though we are far better than my brother who doesn’t do a thing in our house, despite the fact that he actually lives there, with my parents; me, on the other hand, I live on my own and I still come home and help cleaning every other Saturday).
My dad doesn’t like children and I think this is why I never had a good relationship with him until I was old enough to start understanding things that interested him, like politics, technology and other grown up stuff. My dad is a… I lack a word in English now. In Polish I’d say “kumpel”. My buddy. My pal.
But my mom is my real, true friend.
She has always been there for me. And she continues to be. She’s the greatest pillar of my life; whenever I’ve got a problem, I go to her for advice. I generally try not to rant to her too much, because she’s got a lot on her plate, working all day long, worrying about our future, keeping a house… I don’t want to put my problems on her backs too. But the truth is, she’s the only person in the whole universe that I can count on no matter what.
I’ve been through hell as a child and a teenager. My private, little hell, that brought me near suicide (though my mom never found out about that part. It would be too much for her). And you know what stopped me from taking those pills that day, some six years ago? The thought of my mother. Because I was sure she’d cry after me. I wasn’t sure about anything anymore, I was so deep in my self-pity that I thought no one liked me, that I was all alone… except for my mother. And I would never, ever consciously do anything to sadden her. Too often I do that unintentionally. In the end, she’s the only person that I want to be strong for.
We talk about almost anything. She always supports me in my decisions. She wanted me to be an economist, like herself and my dad, but I wanted to study philology; she never tried to push me the other way. I wanted to study in Kraków, despite the fact that there is perfectly nice university closer to home; it costs a lot of money, because while there is no tuition for public university, my parents rent an apartment for me and give me money for food and other things. And here I am, studying philology at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. (And let me tell you, Kraków is twice as expensive to live in as my hometown in Upper Silesia.) She told me once – and I was still in high school then – that if I was to have a child right now, it would be okay. She’d help me. (Of course it was before I found out I was unable to have my own children.)
I never argue with my mom. We disagree sometimes, but we never, ever fight with each other. She gets upset when I do something wrong and it’s far worse than yelling. I immediately feel guilty and it bothers me a lot more than my father’s screaming. You know that tough phase of being a teenager when you defy your parents, especially your mom? I’ve never had one. I was always obedient. This doesn’t mean I didn’t do crazy things, bad things that I shouldn’t do. But once my mom said “don’t do this, please”, I obeyed. And she was always cool with letting me do things like going on my own to my cousin who lived a block away when I was six or so, or like going on my own to Kraków for the mass on the day the Pope was buried (and I was 15 back then); she believed in me and trusted me. I wasn’t always very responsable, but she never doubted me. Even after some nasty things I’ve done to avoid school. My mom worries about me and my dad and my brother and my grandma all the time. I’ve been living on my own for 2,5 years now, but when she knows that I leave for the night, she asks me to text her when I’m back at my apartment, just for her to be sure that I’m okay. Some of my friends don’t understand this, they say that they’d go crazy if their mothers kept tabs on them like that. I don’t mind. I realized long ago that the way she worries about me, I worry about her. I’m okay with that. Also, my friends sometimes can’t understand why I would call my mom every single day. “I never call my mom”, one of them told me once. “She calls me every now and then. Once a week, sometimes not even that often.” “I like to talk with my mom”, I answered. “I don’t mind her wanting to hear from me. I think it’s fabulous we have the relationship like that.” My friend shrugged and changed the subject.
It’s a two hours ride by train from Kraków to Katowice and another half hour by tramway to get to my hometown, Chorzów. Usually I go home once every two weeks, for the weekend. I haven’t been able to do that lately, because of the exam session. And I call my mom every day, but it doesn’t change the fact that I miss her like crazy right now. It’s been almost three weeks that I haven’t seen her and I won’t be able to go home for another two weeks. I miss her a lot. This is why I’m writing this post.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my dad too, despite all his… downsides (this is the topic for another long post). I have a rather difficult relationship with my brother, but I guess I love him too. And I’ve been blessed with the gift of the best friends in the world; my Morpions and my Sabbath are perfect for me and I know I can count on them at any time. But my mom is the number one, always has been and always will be. I love her very much.
