The Mason's Daughter

Karolina is on the right; her daughter, my grandma, is on the left

On October 17, 1914, a baby girl was born in a small German town near the border of Poland. A baby girl named Karolina. As her parents, a brick mason and a loving mother, looked into her sparkling, blinking eyes, I wonder if they had any conception of what those eyes would see. A front-lines view of World War I would fill those tiny eyes for her first four years—images of iron-faced soldiers and buildings destroyed by bombs and mothers who gave up their bread for their children would pervade her childhood. I wonder if Karolina’s mother hugged her extra tightly—perhaps with a premonition of her own early passing that would change her little daughter’s childhood so drastically.

I wonder if her parents imagined the handsome young Polish boy—Jozef—that her eyes would fall upon one day. I wonder if they thought about the day that their little daughter would stand, hand-in-hand with Jozef, and pledge her life to him as long as they both lived, becoming even more Polish than German. I wonder if her parents or even Karolina herself knew the costs that would entail.

In October, 1914, as Karolina’s parents stared in fascination at their perfect little baby born into such a world of turmoil, I know they reached for her tiny hand and felt her little velvety fingers cling to theirs. But I can’t help wondering if they knew what her hands would be called upon to do in the years to come. Their chubbiness would fade away all too quickly, and then Jozef’s ring would be slid onto a finger. With those hands she would wave good-bye to her family as she and her husband started their life in Poland. With those hands she would knead her flour and water and squeeze her sauerkraut and form rows upon rows of beautiful, impossibly perfect pierogi. With those hands she would soon stroke the face of her own little son.

Those hands would soon become work-worn and calloused when the German army invaded Poland in World War II and she was called upon to either abandon her Polish husband and children to save her life or move back to Germany with all of them and see her husband sent into the German army. Her hands must have gripped her husband’s for what seemed like the last time as he was sent into Hitler’s front lines, for to her it was inevitable that he would be shot down and forgotten on a bloody field. And somewhere, somehow, her hands folded together as she lifted them up to the God whom she discovered would not abandon her, no matter Hitler’s cruelty or her own difficulties. She trusted in Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior, whose own hands were pierced with nails for her. That moment of folded hands when she turned her life over to God she described as “a bucket of cold water being thrown on me.”

From that moment on, her hands belonged to her God, and she, her husband, and her four children made it through those dark days—intact and together—a miracle beyond miracles.

But her parents could not have known any of that. Nor could they have known that her tiny feet would someday climb to the deck of an American ship around 1951 and pause as she gazed back at her homeland: tears and fears welling up inside her, but God’s love and promises calming even that inward storm. Those feet would never be still in the next years as she and her family served as indentured servants to a family in Alabama. But somehow, she and Jozef would put aside a few meager coins every month until they could afford the bus fare to Washington. They had a friend, Olga, whom they had met in refugee camps back in the Old Country, who lived near Seattle. And so Karolina and Jozef and their four children found themselves in Washington, and life got easier, but she never worked any less. Time passed, her children grew and married and had children, and one day, her beloved Jozef died.

Her wrinkles grew deeper, her back hunched over, her hair turned a beautiful dove-white, and she began to use a cane, but her eyes still sparkled, her laugh still resounded, and her hands still made pierogi for her loved ones. She gave the hugest hugs you ever could imagine, holding you in her embrace for forever, as if she didn’t want to let you go, and you certainly didn’t want her to let you go, either. My father bent down on one knee before my mother on Karolina's kichen linoleum, and as a young married couple they lived in her house for a month. Karolina would go to visit her friend Olga whenever she could, and the two octegenarians would hold Uno tournaments until late at night.

Two months ago, Karolina fell and broke her hip, and at one point in the hospital, her heart stopped. Her family surrounded her, weeping, when suddenly she opened her eyes. “Why you cry?” She asked in her thick, beautiful accent. “Don’t you cry—I go to Heaven!”

Last night, Karolina, my Bobcha, (from the Polish word babka) my “sweet old lady”, my Great-Grandmother spent the night in Heaven, with her Jesus. Do they have pierogi in heaven, I wonder? They do now! But her eyes could see His face perfectly, her beautiful hands could stroke His, and her feet could run to her Jozef without a cane or a limp. Last night, she had no tears, but we certainly did.

I doubt if her parents, looking into her tiny face 95 years ago, could have known the legacy she would leave. They could not have known that she would bear four children, and they in turn would have many children until at her death her descendants numbered 51! They could not have known that she would live to see her Great-great-grandchild. They could not have known that because of her love for Jesus through everything that most of those 51 descendants are walking with the Lord, destined to see her again, but I know it. I can just hear her saying “Oy, yoy yoy!” at all this fuss, but I can equally hear her whispering, “Jesus!” during any prayer, and I can hear her heartfelt and passionate prayers in Polish. I know my dad saw her kneeling by her bed every night, and he knew she was praying for him. I know that every time I visited her, her Bible was sitting on her table, open, with her glasses lying at the ready. The Polish words that filled page after crisp page of her Bible were clear and dark, and they were her very sustenance.
My Bobcha’s legacy is that of a woman who persevered through darkness and cruelty, a woman who kept her family together through incredible odds. A woman who worked night and day at menial labor so I could sit here today, never having seen the front lines of war. A woman who loved Jesus most of all and who trusted in Him with a faith that would not be shaken by bombs or angry tirades. A woman who was the first to become a Christian in her family and did not give up until her husband became one, too. A woman who hugged me long and hard every time I visited her and, looking into my eyes, said, “Next time, I may be in Heaven.” Now she is, and it is in honor of her that I ask you: what is your legacy? What is my legacy? If she made it through World War II with Jesus by her side, why cannot we make it through the fierce spiritual warfare of today with Jesus by our side? If her legacy is generations of people who follow the Lord, why will you or I be the generation to leave Him? I will not be the one to abandon her legacy of faithfulness, and someday I will tell my own children of my Bobcha, my sweet old lady. What will your Great-Grandchildren tell about you?