I just hung up the phone with Babcia. We video chat several days a week, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, but always at least 2 or 3 days a week. Many times there isn’t a lot new to say and we’re just touching base and trading “I love you”. Living 700 miles away from each other can be tough some days, and we just need to hear each other and see each other to check in and know that each other are okay. More often than not, it’s a lot of “how was your day” and “what did you have for dinner” or “how are you feeling”. The mundane details of the day can be a lifeline when you’re missing someone so much. We talk briefly about the little things that you tend to take for granted when you see someone regularly. It helps to keep us close.

Sometimes though, the conversation takes a different turn. Once in a while, the conditions are just right. One or both of us are in an especially good mood. One of us brings up an old memory. Something in our day has reminded us of something from the past. The conditions are just right, and we begin to share thoughts about things from long ago. It’s those conversations that I love best. Every now and then, something is said that leads us down a path that takes us to places we once knew. That’s when Babcia begins to talk about her life long ago when she was young. That’s when I become more attentive and interested. That’s when I get to hear about Babcia when she was young. That’s when I get the chance to learn things about my mother that I may not have known. Those are the most precious talks that we have.

For instance, my mother once went to the Playboy Club in Chicago when she was young. It was a night out with one of her sisters that led to an adventure upon meeting a group of young men who had a key to the club. In those days, the Playboy Club was an exclusive venue that you had to be a member of to gain entrance. Once when she and her sister were out they met some young men and got themselves invited to join these boys at the club, and they went. The Playboy Club in Chicago was the original location and was a contemporary, upscale club. To imagine that my mother was a part of that history and has been there blows my mind. She and her sisters were all beautiful young women, so it’s no surprise to me that they were invited to come along. I’m sure they fit right in alongside the guests and the bunnies. She’s told me how much fun they had there that night and that it was an exciting evening.

Babcia’s family lived in a brownstone style home on North Spaulding in Chicago. It was a big roomy house with many bedrooms which were rented out at one point. There was also a huge basement. Babcia tells of how they would have parties in the basement and invite the young men renting out the rooms. There was dancing and drinking long into the night at these parties. Of course her father, my dziadek, would be working at his night job when these parties were going on. She talks about how much fun she and her brothers and sisters, and their guests, had playing records, talking, and laughing. What I wouldn’t give to see an old movie of those nights.

Another story she tells is how her brothers would get into her father’s liquor and then refill the bottles with water. Side note… to all you youngsters who think that you thought of that little trick, ya didn’t. It’s a time-honored tradition. She told me of one particular time when her father was meeting with her sister’s future father-in-law before the wedding and served him a glass of whiskey. The father-in-law told my dziadek that the whiskey didn’t taste right, and seemed watery. Dziadek, of course, was not happy.

She tells me now and then the story of how she and my father met at a Polish bar one weekend in 1968. Babcia and her brother, my uncle Mike, had gone in for a drink that afternoon and ended up staying and closing the place down. At some point during the evening, my dad wandered in and my mom noticed him. Her brother dared her to ask my dad to join them in a game of shuffleboard and the rest is history. She told me how other young would-be suitors that she was acquainted with came in and she’d go talk with them or dance with them. My dad waited patiently for her to return as she would flit around the bar socializing. He was smitten, and he didn’t give up easily. It paid off with 49 years of marriage in the end so I’d say he was the lucky one in that story.

Babcia told me of the time she and her sister drove their father to work, at his night job again (he held several jobs at one point). They dropped him off so that they could take the car out for a night on the town. They spent the night out dancing and laughing and enjoying life as young girls do. Then they returned to pick their father up for church for it was a Sunday morning and being devout Catholics, they did not miss a mass. Dziadek was impressed with how the girls were dressed up and looking so nice; little did he know they hadn’t yet been home from their night out and the dresses and hairdos were from the night before. She says they tried their hardest not to doze off during mass that morning.

I love hearing all these stories because they remind me that my mother was once a beautiful young lady, full of life and with her future looming out ahead of her. I wish I could have known her as she was then, so lovely and outgoing and happy. I bet she was a lot of fun. Not that she isn’t fun now, but it would have been nice to know that side of her. Of course, that isn’t possible for me any more than it’s possible for my own daughter to know that side of myself. I love to hear my mama tell her stories because her voice lifts, her eyes light up, and she smiles a smile full of secrets and shenanigans from long ago. Being older now too, I have a smile like that as well. I think in that way we are kindred spirits. It’s nice to be reminded that our parents had lives before us, and that they have their own stories and memories. Some they will share with us, and some they never will.

Like me, my mother has been a child, a daughter, a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. In our lives we are not just one person, but a number of people at different times and in different places. How lucky am I that I have been able to share a few of these portions of her life with her. I loved her as a child, I love her now that I am an adult. To me, she will always be mama. To my daughter and to my niece, she is Babcia… and to my grandson she is Pra-babcia. We all see a different side of her, and yet we share some memories as well. In all times and places, she will always be the beautiful Polish girl who allowed us all to be here and to be together as a family.