A Drop of Rain (23 page)

I handed in my history project a little early. It wasn't as perfect as I wanted it to be, but I couldn't work on it any more. I'm glad I did so much work for my history project and English journal before Mary got sick. The journal is almost finished. Now I just have to concentrate on passing my biology exam on Tuesday.

Curtis is good at biology, especially diagrams of course.

The grocery store where Curtis works says I can start being a cashier there immediately, but I'm going to wait until after the New Year. I have enough stress right now without trying to learn how to do a new job.

I never heard anything from the Rec Plex director. Neither did Mary.

I hope Grandma is enjoying Hawaii. She deserves some happiness.

I hope you don't mind, but now I'm going to fill in the rest of this week's journal entry with some interesting facts that I learned while doing my history project. Here is what
The Breakup of the Soviet Union
said about the collapse of Soviet communism: “In a very brief period between 1989 and 1990, communist regimes in Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania were swept away in popular protests, and this time the Soviets did not intervene to save them.”

Mom gave me the following, amazing quotation from a new book that Joe gave her. The book is called
Witness to Hope
. It is by George Weigel. It is a biography of Pope John Paul II. Here is the quote: “The Solidarity revolution, unique among all the revolutionary upheavals of modernity, killed precisely no one.”

Joe gave me the following helpful quote from himself: “In some respects, the Polish Solidarity Uprising was the greatest of the four great passive-resistance movements of the second half of the twentieth century. I mean the protest movements led by Mahatma Gandhi in India, Martin Luther King Junior in the United States, Pope John Paul II in Poland and Nelson Mandela in South Africa. It was miraculous that the Polish Solidarity movement defeated the massively-armed Soviet empire through peaceful protest alone—that it killed no one.”

Mr. Speers framed “The Fallen Bird” drawing for me and entered it in a juried competition at the college. It won first prize.

A reporter interviewed me and took photos of me and the drawing. The article will be published in a couple of weeks. The judges said that I was competing against some senior college students with much more “formal training.”

Naomi was incredibly impressed with me. So was I. So was Dad. Even Mom was impressed!

Mr. Speers said I can probably get a scholarship for art college now, as long as my
marks
are good.

Some new guys at the grocery store are fairly cool. They're a little older than me and already in second-year at the college. Kevin's in Environmental, and Brian's in Electronics. Brian hasn't had Eva for a teacher, but he says she's supposed to be tough. Kevin and Brian are old friends from North Bay. They do a lot of camping up there together. They said I could go with them some time.

No time to write more.

King Wolf needs marks to get out of his cage and into the forest.

In the middle of the night, when I return from an emergency case at the hospital, I lift my infant grandson Stephen out of his crib and take him to the potty. Why not? My daughter-in-law needs her sleep. She is tired from chasing her little son all day long.

I lie awake thinking about things. Stephen is my third grandchild. Already he is two years old. Andrew is a business man. He travels back and forth to Germany constantly, so his wife and child need my help. My poor daughter-in-law! I'm no replacement for her handsome, dashing Andrew! Good thing he'll be home soon.

Adam and Anne are also married. They each have
one child. Adam is living in my brother's old apartment, because my brother is in Canada. Meanwhile, Anne and her husband are staying with my mother-in-law, now a widow as well as a great-grandmother. Adam is an engineer, and Anne is a nurse. They're very busy these days, struggling hard to make ends meet. I'd love to retire, but how can I? When communism fell, I started from zero again. My savings are gone.

Solidarity won freedom, but not prosperity.

Doctors' salaries are worse than ever. And if I retire, my pension will be too small to live on. My Polish pension would be the equivalent of about 200 Canadian dollars a month. How could I pay for food, clothes, telephone, heat, light, water and gas? The goods are in the shops now, but they're expensive. Besides, I want to help my children.

In my spare time, I knit mittens, hats, scarves and sweaters. I also sew everything from jackets, to dresses, to jeans.

Adam has a very good job, but his family is crowded into one single bachelor's apartment: two adults and one child in one small room. Anne's husband has a university degree. He is trained to be a teacher like Paul was, but he's trying to start a business. He thinks he can make much more money by selling flowers than by giving history lessons. He is probably right.

Should I give up medicine and go help Anne's husband with his business? No, they don't need Grandma as well as Great-grandma. Should I work as a doctor in some African country? No, too hot. I don't like heat.

What about Canada? There is only my brother to invite me. My sister Agnes is dead, and so is her husband. I can't impose on Agnes's grown children. I don't know them. I can't ask them to pay my airfare, then feed and house me until I establish myself.

Oh. The phone is ringing! What time is it? Five o'clock in the morning? I must have fallen asleep. I was dreaming that my oldest grandson, Michael, was very tiny—just a speck.

“Hello?”

“Mom? It's Adam. I knew you'd be getting up to go to work now.”

“What's wrong, dear?”

“It's Michael. He's very ill. I'm afraid for him. He's been in the hospital for a week. First he had mumps. Now they think he has meningitis. They called a few moments ago. They said they don't know whether he is going to live. . . . I'm so afraid.”

“Goodness! I was dreaming about Michael just now. Don't worry, dear. That hospital near you is excellent. I know those doctors well. He'll receive the best care possible. You must pray, and I'll pray too. You know what?”

“What?”

“My mother had a terrible case of mumps when I was a child. The side of her neck was as big as a bunch of bananas. She was unconscious. She didn't recognize us. The doctor wrote out a prescription, but he told us that she probably wouldn't live.

“After the doctor left, an old neighbour woman dropped by to see how things were. She found us children crying and my father in despair.

“ ‘Listen to me,' said the neighbour woman. ‘Here's an old folk remedy that the young doctor probably doesn't know. Take flax seeds, make a poultice, and put it in a linen cloth. Heat the poultice in the oven, and put it on the swelling on your wife's neck. When the poultice cools down, heat it in the oven again, and put it on your wife's neck again. Keep doing this until the swelling goes down.'

“ ‘I'll try anything,' said my father. ‘Johnny, you get some flax seeds from the barn. Elizabeth, you find a clean linen cloth. Mary, you run to the apothecary shop. Get this prescription filled. Cut through the cemetery, so you'll get back sooner.'

“I bolted out the door and sprinted down the street at top speed. It was night. I had never before entered the cemetery in the dark. I was terrified! But I passed those scary graves without stopping, and I got home with my mother's medicine in record time.

“My father gave my mother the doctor's medicine, then he followed the neighbour's instructions carefully. In a few hours, the swelling on my mother's neck had gone down. She opened her eyes and recognized us.

“ ‘Why am I here in bed?' she asked. Then she fell asleep. The next day she was much better, although still very weak.”

“Thanks, Mom,” says Adam.

“For what?” I ask.

“For the story,” says Adam.

That afternoon I phone Adam. Michael is getting better!

That evening my brother phones me. He asks me to
come to Canada. His wife is very ill, and he needs help to take care of her.

I say I'll come right away.

As Hanna and I were leaving the Auschwitz Museum twenty years ago, I noticed something white and fluffy and cottony floating in the hot, still air. This fluff was carrying seeds from the poplar trees. I thought of this fluff as millions of torn souls, clumped together.

When I found Hanna lying paralyzed and dying of cancer six months ago in her room in Montreal, this same fluff was in the air. It clung to the poplar trees outside her window. It clumped on the windowsill of her little rented room. It entered the room.

Hanna too was little more than a skeleton—a boney ruin like the people in the photographs at the museum. But it was by the way she lived that I knew for certain that she was one of the Auschwitz millions, even though she had miraculously escaped death there. She was at one with them.

Always she lived for others. Always she gave. Always she fought for what she believed was right. She fought fiercely for truth, for justice, for humanity.

She never relented, even as she lay dying. I knew she was one of them. One with them. One with the millions.

I knew this. But she never said that this was so.

“What was your purpose in life?” I asked her.

“To pass a message,” she replied.

Here is a poem Hanna wrote for one of her adopted sons. I have just translated it from French. I never knew Hanna to write a poem, so I was surprised to find this.

You told me

“I am not God”

and I know this well.

You are Man.

I have entered

into an imaginary place to live in your landscape

in order to be created anew

and inside out.

That is to say

it is necessary