A Moment of Softness

I feel a moment of softness.

I want to hug my Mama. I want to see her as a 16 year old and I want to hug her.

I wish I could float down on a cloud and see her, a Slovak in a Polish Catholic school.

A skinny, tall, long haired girl. I’d love to see her in St. Cyril. I’d love to see her in her little white communion dress, a little girl from Hamtramck, Rosary beads intertwined in her little fingers.

What happened to her?

She won’t tell me. All I have is little bits and pieces from my childhood. I recall one time when I was very little and we visited my grandmother in Detroit. Her house was clean. She was kind. There was a little kiddy pool in the backyard just for me. A bee came close and I got scared. “STOP! DON’T MOVE!” My grandmother said from the house. “DO NOT MOVE. I promise. I promise if you don’t move, the bee will fly away. It will realize you’re not a flower. I promise.”

“Grandma!”

“Don’t move, Katka! Don’t. Move. I will stand right here with you.”

God I remember this clear as day. I watched the bee for a while with my eyes, and then I closed my eyes and breathed in slowly.

And we both stood perfectly still until the bee went away, just like she promised.

Still to this day I’m not afraid of bees. Quite literally two days ago a terrifying stinging insect was buzzing around me as I sat on my patio furniture. I stayed perfectly still. I watched it with my eyes. I’d never seen a bee or wasp like this. It was all black with grey stripes, no yellow. But I stayed perfectly still. After all, my Grandma promised me. He lingered uncomfortably long and even bumped into me several times, but eventually moved on, just like she said he would.

I remember the bedroom I stayed in. Classic Hamtramck. Wallpaper and curtains, and huge, framed pictures of Jesus holding his bleeding heart. Chairs holding parking spots on the street. The kitchen… It was a perfect picture of the 50s. I can’t describe it any better than that. But that’s when I was really little.

When I was a little bit older, Grandma lived in an old folks apartment complex. Her apartment was pretty. I remember it had such soft light, and the bathroom had matching pink and floral decorations, a toilet seat cover with a rose on it, a cushioned toilet seat, a pretty piece of soap shaped like a sea shell on the marbled sink. There was always little jelly candies in the glass bowl on the kitchen table. Grandma always folded her plastic bags, and she froze milk in the carton in the freezer.

One time I said to my Mom,

“Grandma’s so nice. She never yells.”

“She wasn’t always like that,” Mom said curtly. It’s the only time I remember her saying anything like that. She never spoke ill of her mother. Still doesn’t. But I wonder about that all the time. I was about 10.

Mom had a strange relationship with her family. Her sisters were 12 and 14 years older than her. Can you imagine? Mom was born in 1949. That means they would have been born in the 30s. Goodness.

You know, over these years, through this journey, I’ve been digging and digging to find the softness. I always felt something with my Mama that she called “our special connection.” But… I haven’t been able to find it. I’ve been combing all my memories trying to find the special connection. Because I certainly felt it, be it wrong or right or healthy or unhealthy.

Weirdly, I wasn’t looking for it tonight, but I think it found me.

Church.

Catholic. Fucking. Church.

We loved the music. We loved the art. We loved mass. Mama would take me to mass just the two of us all the time and we would talk about the organ and the artwork. We never really talked about Jesus. We just talked about Latin and “the old way.” We went to the Basilica together in DC when I was 12. I forgot about that. Granted, it was just her and I because no one wanted us around, but… no one really appreciated the art like we did.

What a strange thing. To be born from “The old Country,” in the new country, a half-breed. A low-life amongst the already low-life Pollocks. Because back then the Slovak were considered even lower. To be born that way in the 40s, and go to a hardcore old school Polish Catholic school. Then… bam. The 60’s. Mama thought she was “hip”. She loves to use that word. But the joke is on her, because she’s just an old school Authoritarian. Hippy-dippy nothing. Believing in ghosts and spirits and crystals and nag champa. It was all pretend. She has no idea who she is. I have no idea who she is.

I’m not sure I can know who I am without knowing who she is.

And I do miss her, very, very much.