This one is hard to miss. This one is international. Unlike the obviously locally celebrated Father’s day. Mother’s day is a big deal.
I am an only child. My mother was not. She was the oldest, she was the one who knew all the tricks, who ran the show, who knew how to delegate the troops. She later became a teacher, I only knew her as a teacher. A teacher in my school. I was lucky that she was not my teacher. She was a super tough one. Everybody was a bit afraid of her. She also had one of the highest ranks in ZHP, the Polish Girl and Boy Scout organization. So she was very busy. Teaching, organizing, preparing events. I was the kid that was around when these things happened. I would spend my afternoons in the back of a classroom with older kids. Learning things I was not supposed to know until years later. I would be called in to illustrate certain problems on the black board, or to explain certain things to the class from the perspective of the younger child, or sometimes to explain what the other class had heard.
When it came to these Scout events. I always found myself surrounded by a group of people who somehow cared for me. My mom would care for them.
And then, when I could not come with her, I would stay home, with my father, who would be often so incredibly tired from working through the night, or working on the coal mine emergency team, that he would just sleep.
And then I was alone.
I would find these exciting parenting books and somehow figure out how I was doing compared to children of my age.
My mother is not a teacher anymore. When we moved to Germany, all of us had to learn the new language. Teaching was not an option for her. She now works for a bank.

One story just came to my mind that somehow really illustrates the interaction I had with my mother when I was a child.
Somebody started throwing stones. I am not sure who or why it was. I happened to be on the wrong side. These two boys just would not let me and my friend Zbyszek alone. We tried to hide, but they would just keep picking up new stones and throwing them at us. What I remember very clearly is how I picked up a stone and how I threw it at one of the boys. My logic was that I really did not want to hit him in the eye. So I must have waited for the moment when he turned around to run away. I threw my stone. I swear it was the first and last stone I have ever thrown at anybody. I hit the kid right in the head. Like that. He was so far away. My aim is not the best. This stone just flew so perfectly and hit him right in the back of his head. There was blood everywhere. The stone had cut him so well, he needed to go to the hospital to get several stitches.
I ran home. My mother came home from work hours later. When I told her what happened she listened like a therapist and then just asked me a strange question. She asked me if I had a toy that I really, really wanted. I clearly wanted this fantastic new radio controlled car! (silly question.)
We went to buy the car. The best toy ever. I think it was a police car. The remote control turned on the lights and such.
We bought the car. And then... I had to give the car to the boy. With an apology. Well, he was happy. Everybody wanted that car. Now he had it. (and several stitches)
I was not really hurt. I had learned a lesson, but the solution was somehow smarter than I had expected. I was afraid of punishment. My punishment was the reward for the other kid. I never threw a stone again. I never got a real remote controlled car... (until last year, but that’s another story...)

My mother would surprise me with these unexpected solutions to seemingly hopeless situations. I was always very impressed.

Oh yes, and she is a great cook, but I guess every mother is. Except that my mother was not a single child. So even though it was only me and my father (and the dog), we would get the really big, large family portions of food. The serious stuff. My mother is the only person I know who can pile up soup. (she really can...)

And I remember her in the moments of real danger. I remember this one time when we were in the mountains on one of those ski lifts, after a storm. It was us and her class on some excursion in the mountains. This huge tree decided to fall directly on us. A large fir. A serious mountain tree, just came down crashing at us. Hitting the steel line of the lift exactly in the spot where we were sitting. It hit my mother, but not me. She grabbed me and protected me with her body. We then flew up and down several times. The touching the floor with our feet just to shoot up into the sky seconds later. There was a soldier in a seat in front of us who was courageous enough to jump off this vibrating string and to call the station, so they stopped the lift. The tree had to be removed before we could continue our ascend. (We were so lucky the line did not snap, or just fall off the guiding tracks.
The other time seemed more serious personally. A cleaning person had the idea to fill a cleaning agent into a coke bottle and to leave this poison in the teacher-dressing-room. The cleaner was a concentrated, brown liquid, it was a summer day and I was very, very thirsty. My mother was a teacher, so according to school law I would change my shoes in this dressing room, with this “cold coke” waiting for me. It did not even take a second for the chemical to completely burn out the inside of my mouth. The chemical did not have a taste, it only had pain, because it destroyed all taste buds as it “worked” in my mouth. I remember my mother appearing almost out of nowhere and mobilizing half school to get me milk (not an easy one in Poland in the 70’s as I remember), so I could quickly get the poison out of my system. I was very lucky. I had not inhaled enough to actually swallow enough of the substance and so I only destroyed the inside of my mouth.
Just a few days before that, a kid at another school had died as the chemical burned through his esophagus.

I will not be able to visit my mother today. She is in Germany and I am here in New York. I have not seen her for almost a year now. We speak on the phone at least once a week. We make each other laugh.
She taught me quite a lot. More than she might sometimes think. I think the greatest thing is the balance between her and my father. They are so completely different from each other. Both quite wonderful in their very own ways. It must be hard for them. I am their only child and here I am so far away, on another continent, speaking a this third foreign language. They came to visit when it was easier for them to fly. They have not been in New York for almost four years now. Last time they came here was for my wedding.

How could anybody ever read this much online?. If you made it this far, let me post a picture for you. This one is also from Poland. The happy guy is me. And yes, this is my mother. Happy Mother’s day everyone.