Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature with over 20,000 daily subscribers and over 8,000 archived posts.
John Guzlowski: Hope Is Our Mother
A question I get often about my Polish parents is what kept them going during the war and after the war.
I think part of the answer is that they were both people who believed in hope.
So what’s hope?
Hope for me is tied up with family and friends, people. Hope for me is a wish. I hope that all of our lives get better, that wars and plagues and cruelty somehow get pushed further and further back, that we discover that we don’t have to kill each other to be happy.
My parents were two of the greatest optimists I ever knew. They knew death and misery inside out, but they also knew hope. They had experienced sorrow and trials like I can’t imagine, not only during the war, but after. After spending almost a decade as slave laborers and refugees in Germany, they came to the US, a country where they didn’t know anyone, didn’t know the language, didn’t know anything. They had to build new lives for themselves and for their children, my sister and me.
And they kept going, sure that things would somehow get better.
I recently had a discussion on Facebook with a friend whose parents were also in the camps, and we talked about whether or not we would have what it took to survive. She said she would have just given up, given in to the misery and laid down in the road and let the Germans kill her.
I didn’t believe her. I don’t think she would give up. From what I’ve seen, most people don’t give up. Maybe some do, but the majority don’t.
I once talked about this with my mother. I asked her about hope and what kept people like her and my dad going. My mom looked at me, smiled, and said, “Optimism is a crazy man’s mother.”
It’s a profound statement, I think. And it gets at the heart of her understanding of hope.
At the very end of her life, after two major surgeries for cancer, decades of heart problems, and arthritis that had left her crippled, my mom had a stroke that paralyzed her almost completely. She couldn’t move her hands or feet, could barely speak. The doctors told me she could never recover from this, and I told her that, and I asked her if she wanted to be taken off her life support so she could die in peace without pain.
Forcing her lips and tongue to move, she said, “No.”
Even at the end, my mother had hope.
And what did this teach me?
Hope is our mother.
Copyright 2018. This essay first appeared in the Dziennik Zwiazkowy, the oldest Polish newspaper in America. It was republished in Who I Am: Lives Told in Kitchen Polish by John Guzlowski.
~
John Guzlowski’s poems about his parents’ experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany appear in his award-winning Echoes of Tattered Tongues. His most recent books of poems are Mad Monk Ikkyu, True Confessions, and Small Talk: Writing about God and Writing and Me. His novels include Retreat: A Love Story and the Hank and Marvin mysteries.
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Yes, I agree with John when he says or, rather, his mother says, “Optimism is a crazy man’s mother.” And I have often asked myself whether I would be the survivor or the one who asks for the morphine. I think I’d be the latter. And now, living in these ‘interesting times’, I find optimism in one corner of my heart, but a profound despair in the other. I admire all those who’ve made it through such darkness with courage and, well, hope.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yes exactly. “optimism in one corner of my heart, but a profound despair in the other.” Thank you.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I admire the courage of many as well.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Wonderful to read this here today, and much needed. And the photo is perfect, Jon. Thanks.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Hope. It’s there, even when I want to scream and throw the phone across the room. It’s there when I pull the sheets over my head. It shows up when Tashi clicks across the wood floor, lifts her old muzzle to mine, her eyes reminding me to get up and take her for a walk.
LikeLiked by 3 people
yes, every day is a day of hope. I feel this more and more as I grow older.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thanks, John.
LikeLiked by 1 person
yes, every day is a day of hope. I feel this more and more as I grow older.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tashi !!!!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Optimism in the face of extreme adversity seems to arise from a combination of hope and fortitude, with an added sense of some sort of justice underpinning existence. Maybe these days, to keep hope alive, we also need to believe in the power of a shared love, like that of Guzlowski and his mother: one that transcends horror or despair.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yes, a love that transcends.
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, despite a long difficult life, my moms glorious welcoming smile when she would see me approaching always gave me hope and made me thankful. She left me her smile and I use it everyday if only at myself in the mirror.
LikeLiked by 4 people
thank you for this beautiful memory
LikeLiked by 3 people
She left me her smile: what a great turn of phrase to celebrate her love and beauty.
>
LikeLiked by 2 people
Reading this gave me hope for the human spirit. I wish I had known them, loved them, been there for them.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Yes, the resilience of the human spirit.
LikeLiked by 4 people
thank you.
Yes, they taught me so much and it took me years and years to realize it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’s called maturity. I swear, not a hair on my mother’s head grew right until I was about 24.
LikeLiked by 2 people