For My Grandma
My entry for the ModCloth Thanksgiving Thank-A-Thon Blog Contest: a letter to my grandma, Kaszimira Litwin Zimolzak, born 13 February 1927 in rural Poland.
Even though I’ve rarely said it, as we rarely exchange words of emotion, and never in this context, thank you. In spite of the language barrier that will keep you from understanding every word, even though you stopped school during fifth grade in Poland, and you learned English only when your children did, thank you.
I know you’ve worked hard your whole life: on your family farm, in Poland, and in Detroit’s automotive factories once you emigrated. Thank you for working hard to support your family in your homeland and in America; for raising my aunts, uncles, and father; and for taking on so many struggles so I, and others of my generation, did not have to.
Thank you for stopping school in fifth grade, because to continue would have been a death sentence. Thank you for surviving. Thank you for obeying quietly when you were only fourteen, for packing your bags quickly so the German army would not kill your family, but only separate you. You lived for four years away from your family, in physical torment and constant danger, and by the time your camp was liberated you welcomed the courtship and marriage proposal from one of the American soldiers you’d met. I cannot imagine having to live under these circumstances at such an age, and I suppose you only knew you had to live.
For continuing to work for your immigration papers, even after power in the country had transferred from Nazi Germany to Communist Russia, thank you. You moved to America for freedom but you became a busy mother of eight, and cooked full meals for the ten people in your family every day. Though you loved your husband, you deferred to his authority as head of house, even when he was drunk and abusive. You surely thought such a life was better than the one you had during the war, though you were still haunted by the memories, and you found emotion difficult to express, and you were suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.
Thank you for being so open, the one time I dared ask, in revealing how emergency vehicle sirens to this day involuntarily make you cry.
You discovered a career outside the home, in a low-paying position as a factory worker: thank you, because you were the first woman in your family to do so. Thank you for coping with the death that had surrounded you from such a young age; for mourning your first son’s death in infancy, and your husband’s death many years later; for accepting your own mortality; for coping with diabetes, heart disease, a colostomy, Parkinson’s, and cancer.
You are amazing. You are impossibly strong in spite of these events, and you have become a matriarch for an extended family of nearly thirty children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Even though I’ve rarely said it, and even though you won’t read it, and even though you might not know, I love you and I thank you: you will know some day.
Babcia, dziękują, błogosławią was, i kocham was.
Even though I’ve rarely said it, as we rarely exchange words of emotion, and never in this context, thank you. In spite of the language barrier that will keep you from understanding every word, even though you stopped school during fifth grade in Poland, and you learned English only when your children did, thank you.
I know you’ve worked hard your whole life: on your family farm, in Poland, and in Detroit’s automotive factories once you emigrated. Thank you for working hard to support your family in your homeland and in America; for raising my aunts, uncles, and father; and for taking on so many struggles so I, and others of my generation, did not have to.
Thank you for stopping school in fifth grade, because to continue would have been a death sentence. Thank you for surviving. Thank you for obeying quietly when you were only fourteen, for packing your bags quickly so the German army would not kill your family, but only separate you. You lived for four years away from your family, in physical torment and constant danger, and by the time your camp was liberated you welcomed the courtship and marriage proposal from one of the American soldiers you’d met. I cannot imagine having to live under these circumstances at such an age, and I suppose you only knew you had to live.
For continuing to work for your immigration papers, even after power in the country had transferred from Nazi Germany to Communist Russia, thank you. You moved to America for freedom but you became a busy mother of eight, and cooked full meals for the ten people in your family every day. Though you loved your husband, you deferred to his authority as head of house, even when he was drunk and abusive. You surely thought such a life was better than the one you had during the war, though you were still haunted by the memories, and you found emotion difficult to express, and you were suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.
Thank you for being so open, the one time I dared ask, in revealing how emergency vehicle sirens to this day involuntarily make you cry.
You discovered a career outside the home, in a low-paying position as a factory worker: thank you, because you were the first woman in your family to do so. Thank you for coping with the death that had surrounded you from such a young age; for mourning your first son’s death in infancy, and your husband’s death many years later; for accepting your own mortality; for coping with diabetes, heart disease, a colostomy, Parkinson’s, and cancer.
You are amazing. You are impossibly strong in spite of these events, and you have become a matriarch for an extended family of nearly thirty children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Even though I’ve rarely said it, and even though you won’t read it, and even though you might not know, I love you and I thank you: you will know some day.
Babcia, dziękują, błogosławią was, i kocham was.