We boarded a train heading east to a place I was told I had visited as a child, but couldn’t remember. My son was barely out of diapers; he stood on the seat glued to the window. Within minutes the city was behind us and we were playing a game of spot the cow, or the horse, or a car, or something. We could do this for hours, which was fortunate, because these trips often lasted that long. The train barely took on any speed before it had to stop again, station to station. I had packed sandwiches, snacks, drinks, and candy. He had a colouring book and toy cars. Some of the time I hoped he’d fall asleep; alone time was such a precious commodity, rarely was I afforded a chance to clear my mind.
Poland is half the geographical size of Manitoba, with a population larger than that of Canada. Yes, it is densely populated. I don’t think we ever travelled more than a few hundred kilometers, a journey that in Canada would take a couple hours at most, but in Poland, the train had to stop every fifteen minutes or so as it leisurely made its way through villages, towns, and cities.
I was a young mom, carrying my son on my hip, heading to one place or another that I didn’t know to meet people I didn’t know. My tiny companion and I had already trekked much of the Polish countryside, meeting my late mother’s friends, our distant relatives, her schoolmates. Every time I connected with one person they gave me the name and phone number of another, and so the visits continued. I had a notebook filled with the contact details of strangers, well, they were strangers to me.
“Hello, my name is Dorota, I’m Ewa’s daughter,” which is how I started every conversation, pausing for an answer. Most of the time, the person on the other end of the phone didn’t even know who I was talking about.
“Ewa? Jaka Ewa?” [Which Ewa?] In Poland there are thousands of Ewas, everyone knows an Ewa, its a ccommon name. I offered more information. “Ewa Sekowska.” (If I knew they were her childhood friends, I used her maiden name.)
“Ewa…” the voice over the phone would soften with delight, my mother was loved by many. “How is your mom?” The dreaded question; they didn’t know. Even a decade after her death, some people didn’t know she was gone. This was before the days of the internet. I was the bearer of terrible news.
“I’m sorry to say, mama is not living any more. She died a few years ago, cancer. I’m sad to tell you this.” My words hung in the air. There was silence for a minute or two. What more could I say?
“I have this book she…., I mean your mom, borrowed me,” one woman cried, “I’ve been meaning to return it. All these years, I thought, I’ll just run into Ewa somewhere and I’ll give it back.”
I didn’t know how to console her, how to console any of them. Many were my mother’s friends, some relatives, but I didn’t believe I had ever met them. I had been grieving my mother’s death for a decade, they had had only a minute to let this sink in.
“I’m so sorry…” I whispered into the phone.
“No, no, I’m sorry, I’m sorry child, I didn’t know. How are you doing?”
“Good, I’m okay. Yah, I’m fine ummm,” my answers were always so awkward; it was best to get straight to the reason I found them. “Actually, I’m calling to ask if you can help me with something.”
“Of course, what do you need?”
“See, I’m in Poland with my son for the next few months and I’m wondering if maybe you have pictures of my mom, or stories of her that you could share with me. We can come visit you, if that would be okay?”
“Come, come! I have pictures, so many, I want to see Ewa’s child, her grandchild.”
“Thank you, that means so much to me.” Slowly we’d both find our words and often ended up chatting for a long during that first phone call. I needed to provide them with the whole backstory; leaving Poland, Germany, then coming to Canada, Ewa’s five children growing up, her sickness, where we were now, how many grandchildren she had, if we were happy. Nearly every conversation ended with, ‘are you happy?’
What to say. Truth wasn’t really an option. I always went with neither very happy, nor very sad, somewhere in the middle, as with most things in life. It hadn’t been easy that’s for sure, but I’d come to understand that every person had this idea of life in Canada being only great and the couple times I dared burst their bubble with even a shred of reality, I couldn’t stand the disappoint on their face. Anyway, it was considered impolite to speak poorly of anyone or anything.
“Yes, we’re doing well, all of us. We’re fine.”
And so we’d set a tentative date for a visit until I could confirm the train schedule and call them back with exact details. I’d describe myself, my son, and his brown teddy bear so that they’d know it was us when we’d arrive.
Days later, we’d barely step off the train, when some woman would come running and wrap her arms around me.
“Dorotka, Dorotka, oy, how good that you are here.” Within minutes she’d insist I call her ‘aunty, related or not. Formal greetings, sir and ma’am are expected between people of different generations, but they are considered cold and removed. In Poland, you’re strangers until you’re family, there’s not much else in between. We’d arrive at a small home filled with every person in that small town who ever knew my mother and a bed prepared because it was out of the question that we’d travel back the same day. I learned early on not to mention the possibility of a hotel; it was a huge insult, even though I would have preferred my own space. My son would be quickly scooped up, given some new toys, handed over to other children to play with, photo albums were waiting on tables, and the smell of fresh baking filled the air. Hours of memories awaited me. We were received with so much love.
One aunt, a distant aunt, the wife of a brother of my paternal grandfather greeted me with tears in her eyes. A tiny woman, maybe four foot ten, frail, she raised her arms and wrapped them around me. “Dorotka, you are here. You’ve come back.” She started crying, her voice breaking, overcome by emotion. I began to cry. “Sit, sit, I will bring us tea.”
I put my son on the floor, he was tired of being carried around and wanted to explore. He walked straight for a bedroom, something we don’t do, going into any space to which we weren’t first invited. “I’m sorry aunty, he’s very curious.”
“No, no, don’t worry, let him go, nothing he can break in there. Let’s see what he finds,” she laughed from the kitchen. She told me later that day that a small child hadn’t stepped foot in her home in decades; that seeing Ewa’s grandson playing on her couch, jumping in the pillows, was the most joy she had felt in a very long time.
“Your mother came to see me before she left. She didn’t say she was leaving, but she gave me this bracelet and asked me just to keep it safe for her, for a bit.” She was holding a silver bracelet I remembered my mother wearing, I remembered my mother loving. “She didn’t come back for it,” she turned away and looked out the window. “She never came back.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know me being here is so painful.” I felt awful. It was true, everywhere I went there was joy in remembering Ewa but there was always sorrow. It was impossible to get through one of these visits without crying.
“No, no, don’t say that. Your mom sent you to us. She came back in the only way she could, in you.” She handed me the bracelet. “You take this please. I’ve kept it safe for your mom for all these years, now it’s yours.”
“No aunty, I can’t. She gave this to you.”
“No, she didn’t. She asked me to keep it safe for her; clearly she couldn’t take everything she wanted to to the other side of the world. She just asked me to keep it safe. I’ve done that, now I’m returning it to her.” She put her hand under my fingers and folded them over the bracelet that was lying in the palm of my hand. She rested her hand on top of mine and left it there for some time.
We talked for hours; she served soup, potatoes, a few vegetables, and pieces of pan fried meat for the midafternoon meal. After that there was dessert and more tea. It had been a long day, but we wouldn’t be staying. She lived close enough that we could go home in the late afternoon and I’d have my son in bed by nightfall.
“Visit me again? You’ll come again?” she asked as I slipped on my son’s shoes and got dressed by the door.
“Yes aunty, I’ll be back,” and I was, many times. Even if just for a few hours every year or two, we loved being together. She marvelled as my son grew and was so happy when I arrived with my first daughter. I started coming with pictures of our life in Canada; she wanted to see our home, the snow, the garden.
News of my aunt’s death came via a phone call from her son in the middle of the night. A few days later there was a funeral, livestreamed from their parish. I sat in my home wrapped in a blanket in the very early hours, listening from Canada. She had given me so many memories of my mother, stories, anecdotes. There was a version of my mother I was discovering which was quite different from the woman I had known.
My memories of my mother are of her cleaning, cooking, hanging laundry on the clothesline outside, baking cakes, occasionally sitting on an armchair sewing something while my brothers played on the Atari. I knew she liked to draw; she once made a picture dictionary of animals and household objects with their Polish names for her Saturday Polish school class. They were very well done, her pencil renditions.
I can admit there have been times in the past twenty-three years, that searching for my mother has consumed my life. I’ve felt that I could not know myself until I knew her. She had carried our history, she was our roots; she was the bridge between two worlds. I was too young when she died to understand how important knowing our history would become to me. I didn’t ask all the questions I now wish I had answers to. Even before her death she was ripped away; the cancer robbed her of the time needed to pass on her knowledge and the strength to do it. Frequent hospital visits, the chemotherapy, radiation, surgery after surgery; they left a hollow being where once a joyful and vibrant woman lived. I had little choice but to gather memories, much like pebbles scattered across a field. I wanted to get to know the person so many adored.
It’s not easy getting to know someone who is gone. Everyone knew her in whatever role she was playing at the time, in their life; someone’s wife, someone’s mother, someone’s sister. But if Ewa could speak for herself, who was Ewa? Who could Ewa have been if she had had a different life, if she had had more time?
