Happy Birthday Mom

Today, on what would have been her 92nd birthday, I celebrate my mother. Yes I mourn her. I grieve her loss. Every day I thank God she was my mom.

My mother is my inspiration. She was a realist. She saw many things in her life. She saw pure joy and pure hatred. She was a true patriot and lived an authentic life. She wanted to be remembered for her choice to live life as a person who was loyal and supportive. She fought for justice, always took care of people, and our home was always open to our friends and to anyone who could not be with their own families - especially around the holidays.

She was brilliant. A gene, that sadly, I did not inherit. She loved to laugh. Something I did not see much when I was a teenager and I am confident my own teenage children know how that feels. She taught me to look at the big picture, a gift I try to work on every day.

In her early years she wanted to be a journalist and figured out a way to achieve her goal. At the end of World War II, right before the Communists took over Poland, she boarded a train by herself and left her beloved family and country to save her life and hope for a better tomorrow. Eventually she landed in the United States of America and gave us all the gift of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. It was decades before she was able to return to Poland - to the family and land she loved. She gave everything she had to her four daughters. How lucky we were.

At the end of my mom's life she had dementia. All of her gifts, among them writing, painting, broadcasting, sadly taken away from her. My hope was always that the awful memories of life in Nazi occupied Poland as well as the pain of not seeing her parents, sisters, and brother were also taken away.

In the simplicity of dementia my mother remained a warm, gracious, and loving woman who up and until the end of her life she taught me what it meant to be really, really brave.

As I do every day, but especially today, I celebrate the remarkable woman named Roza Fredericka Nowotarska Kobylinska and all the wonderful gifts she taught me.

Love you mom and Happy Birthday (Sto' Lat).
Magda