moja mama

                                                              for Zofia

It was Mother’s Day and I thought of you, moja mamusia i moja mama.

Adulthood, adolescence and childhood, I called you by those names.

You were dear and precious to me, kochana mamo, dearest Mother.

In your womb you wove me, nourished me with your love,

endured excruciating pain, enabled me to humanly manifest.

Did I ever thank you for my Birth-Day?

Did I never say dziekuje za moje urodziny?

I wish I had then, I wish I could now, I wish we might again have our time,

all over again and again, moja mama.

Moja mama.

*******************************************************

The anniversary of your death, the day after Mother’s Day.

I wore my Siberian-mined Seraphinite,

Heavenly fronds of silvery-white crystal angel feathers,

fluorescing, shimmering, timelessly whispering and calling me.

You were deported to Irkutsk, Siberia, from Lwów, then Poland.

You were too young to suffer so under Stalin’s ethnic cleansing,

your heart became hardened, a prisoner behind thick walls

and those walls never ever came down again, not ever.

Oh how I wish I could have cast them aside,

found some weakness, some glimmer of light

through which I could clamber in and feel your warmth,

Moja mama.

As a child, a young girl, a teenager, an adult,

I tried hard to understand your harshness, your aloofness.

No relentless battering was able to soften that formidable layer.

But moja mama,

now that I have witnessed what you have witnessed,

my heart broken into little pieces, as you had yours

then clumsily and erroneously put back together again,

Humpty-Dumpty style but not by the king’s horses or men,

now that my heart has been squeezed, wrung out and hung up to dry

only now and now only do I understand why it was as it was,

why you were who you were and why you were as you were…

Not Siberia-style, but through my own piercingly personal life-lessons.

Moja mama.

Old stone of Seraphim, unique exquisite secret of Lake Baikal,

oldest, deepest and most mysterious freshwater lake on earth,

healing spiritual conductor of the Divine Feminine,

with your energy bring all etheric bodies into alignment.

Enable old patterns of dis-ease and imbalance to fall away,

create new space where deep peace and understanding might settle,

mysterious magnetism calling me to purchase you and take you home,

knowing nothing of your ancient geographic ancestry or healing powers.

Now you miraculously speak to me of moja mama, of Siberia, of compassion,

an unconditional Mother’s love that was always there waiting to be released.

Tenderly I stroke the Seraphinite locket, tilting it this way and that

hoping in so doing that it might open a communication portal,

pleading with the heavenly beings to deliver my soul-message to Zofia,

Holy  Wisdom’s name-sake, in hindsight I see now, so wise in her ways,

” Mamo, kocham cie,”… “Mother, I love you.”

Moja mama.

Marian and Zofia Korsak.

Photo taken 1945, in Loreto, Italy, after the Battle of Monte Cassino.  My mother, parents and sister with husband, were deported by Stalin’s soldiers, from Lwów, Poland, in 1940, to a work camp near Irkutsk, on Lake  Baikal, in Siberia, Russia.  Today Lwów is Lviv and is in the Ukraine. They were lucky to survive the harsh freezing conditions, hard labour, appalling cramped living conditions, scarcity of food and sickness that killed so many folk deported to Siberia.  Not only Poles but many other nationalities and ethnic minorities suffered the same fate. In mid 1942, after the signing of the Sikorski-Mayski agreement, an amnesty for Polish citizens in the Soviet Union was declared. The Polish Free Army was formed under General Anders and my mother and family managed to leave Siberia. She, together with my uncle and grandfather joined the Polish Army, where she drove 3 ton ammunition lorries across Iran, Iraq and on to Egypt, joining up with the British 8th Army. She met my father in the Polish Army and they were married at Loreto in Italy, after the battle of Monte Cassino, in which both my parents took part. After WW2 not wanting to go back to a Poland ruled by the Soviets and Communism once more, my parents and extended family migrated to Britain, settling in London, my father working as a tailor, sewing fine hand made suits. My mother soon followed him into the same trade.

Monte Cassino : a rocky hill about 130 km southeast of Rome, with a Benedictine Abbey built on it’s summit.  January 1944 saw the start of the Battle of Monte Cassino, to break through German defenses so that the Allies could make their way up to Rome and eventually try to enter Germany through France.  On 18 May 1944, soldiers of the 2nd Polish Corps raised the Polish flag over the monastery ruins and the road to Rome was once more open.  The Abbey was rebuilt after the war.

moja mamusia : Polish, my mummy ; moja mama : my mother

kochana mamo : dearest mother ; dziekuje za moje urodziny : thank you for my Birthday,

Seraphinite :  a green stone belonging to the Chlorite group, containing fibres that shimmer as the stone is turned about in the light. It is named after the Seraphim angels and is said to connect us with the higher dimension, opening the channels of communication and energy between us and the angelic realm. It is a powerful gemstone for healing on all levels- physical, emotional and spiritual.  It is mined exclusively from the “Korshunovskaia” mine near Lake Baikal.

Siberia : a vast Russian province containing most of Northern Asia.

Lake Baikal, in southern Siberia, is the world’s oldest freshwater lake : 25 million years old, and the deepest at 1,700 m.  It is 644 km long, curving through south-eastern Siberia, north of the Mongolian border.

Humpty Dumpty : A child’s nursery rhyme…

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

Holy Wisdom : Sophia in Greek, Zofia in Polish.

 

My mother was widowed in 1981.  In 2004 she came to Lanark, the town where I now live in Scotland, into a Nursing Home where she remained until her death on March 7th 2008. I was probably closer to my mother in those last 4 years than I had ever been, regularly visiting her in the Home, but tragically she had Alzheimer’s and she became a confused shadow of the strong and determined woman that she once was, having survived all that she did.

Apologies…some of the letters in the  Polish words have their wee tails/ wee lines missing…I am not technologically savvy enough to be able to bring up the full Polish Alphabet on WordPress!