| MAMA |
with piercing blue eyes and golden
hair crowning her head like a halo. |
| MAMA |
taking care of her many siblings. |
| MAMA |
playing the piano, composing songs
and poems. |
| MAMA |
shedding bitter tears, being shipped
off to St. Petersburg to study medicine, when all she ever wanted was to
be a concert pianist. |
| MAMA |
returning with a degree specializing
in dentistry. |
| MAMA |
holding a document ordering her
to Crimea amidst the outbreak of the revolution. |
| MAMA |
fleeing Russia with the whole family
to her mother's native Poland. |
| MAMA |
practicing dentistry, attending
drama lessons. |
| MAMA |
being offered the lead in a movie,
which would catapult her career and make her one of the most acclaimed
and beautiful silent movie stars of Western Europe. |
| MAMA |
starring in a movie with Lionel
Barrymore, not getting along with him and chastising him in her native
tongue while filming a love scene. |
| MAMA |
supporting her siblings and putting
them through school. |
| MAMA |
meeting my father and retiring
from films to be a wife and stepmother. |
| MAMA |
taking care of me, making sculptures
from butter and cutting out intricate designs from potatoes, that she would
fry to satisfy the whims of a spoiled daughter. |
| MAMA |
bidding good-bye to my father,
not knowing that she will never see him or her stepson again. |
| MAMA |
going to work as an interpreter
during daytime air raids and trying to cheer us up in the bunker during
nightly air raids. |
| MAMA |
fleeing Berlin with us, working
in a soup kitchen in a refugee camp. |
| MAMA |
immigrating to the USA and working
for a prominent family who loved and respected her. |
| MAMA |
embracing my husband at our wedding
as the son she never had. |
| MAMA |
working in a factory, then retiring
to take care of her mother. |
| MAMA |
dying in her sister's arms, losing
her battle with cancer. |
