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.
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.
