Photo Story: Joy and Sadness

(Original Image and Text, Copyright (c) 2011 Cynthia Shenette) Who's the little baldy? My mom, Christine (Szerejko) Shenette (1921-2008).  Apparently people often mistook Mom for a boy when she was a baby.   Mom told me that my grandmother would dress her in ruffles and ribbons to try to make her look more girly.  My grandmother would get so mad when people would say, "Oh what a cute little boy!"  Mom was born at home, not at a hospital, in the heat of July.  I can only imagine how difficult that was for my grandmother.  Mom was my grandparents oldest child.  Two more children soon followed.

While the 1920s was a decade of great joy for my grandparents, it was also a time of sadness.  My great-grandmother Ewa died at the relatively young age of 51 from cancer.  My grandmother took care of Ewa throughout her illness.  I remember how she use to talk about the difficulties of tending to her dying mother at home while taking care of two babies under the age of three.

Back in Poland my grandfather's mother Jozefa also died.  She too was a relatively young woman, only 53.  Jozefa never saw my grandfather Adolf or his brother Aleksander again after sending them to America in 1913.


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Ewa (Kowalewska) Bulak - Wordless Wednesday
Meditation: The Strength of Ordinary Women
The Stories My Grandmother Told Me
Meditation: Family History