Epilogue: This Is the Story of an Ordinary Day

I’m already awake when I hear the thud of newspapers on the front step. I listen for the delivery man's car—that loud exhaust I've grown accustomed to—but today it's silent. Perhaps he's finally had it fixed, or maybe it's someone new.

Unable to sleep, I watch as sunlight seeps through the slats of the window blinds. No point fighting it. I get up and make my way down the soft carpeted stairs to the kitchen below. I prepare my coffee exactly as I like it—strong espresso with hot frothy milk in my favourite mug—and return to bed with the newspapers Jonathan brought in.

These quiet hours belong to me now. Jonathan's at the gym, then work. After years of rushed mornings with getting the kids to school and myself to work, I can begin my day on my terms: coffee in bed, organizing my day, perusing the Globe and Mail and The Gazette, scrolling through the online disasters. The news is an addiction, like my morning coffee.

My morning ritual unfolds in a home I love. Its rooms are much more than the comfortable place where we live and the cloistered feel when I close the front door. I'm enveloped by family history in this century-old townhouse, in a neighbourhood where the lady at the dry cleaners still inquires about my grown children, and the man at the cheese store, with the weary eyes from decades behind the counter, greets me with a knowing look I've come to expect. Every room, each object, evokes a story—not just of those who came before, but of myself.

Almost every evening, we gather around a table that once belonged to Jonathan’s grandparents, an inheritance from their home on Manhattan's Upper West Side. It rests on his grandfather's Persian rug, worn threadbare where his office chair once stood. In a sideboard (the one which took Jonathan three weeks to notice after I bought it) I store Goldbloom family china and silverware, and in our bedroom stands the mahogany dresser from his father’s childhood home in an elegant graystone on Crescent Street.

An unsigned oil painting of indeterminate provenance hangs in my kitchen. My mother gave it to me when I was in my twenties. She loved it but believed that I needed it more than she did. Years later, she came to visit and paid me a rare compliment. “You have a beautiful home,” she said. Then she announced that she wanted the painting back. Maybe she thought that she now needed it more than I did. I couldn’t part with it.

On the shelf in my home office is the floral-patterned pewter plate my mother brought in her suitcase from Holland. In a kitchen drawer lies her other Dutch treasure: a silver baby spoon with a windmill. It’s tarnished, and I should polish it—but somehow, it still reflects the hopes she had.

This house tells the story of a long marriage and the layers of a lifetime. The rooms are brimming with books and art Jonathan and I have gathered together over the years. Photographs of our children and happy times clutter surfaces, as do photos of lifelong friendships.

What this house really tells is the story of a fortunate life of comfort and safety, untouched by hardship or much worry. That’s what takes my breath away. Now that I know my parents’ stories.

This house tells the story of the daughter of a man who was one brave Home Army fighter among the men and women who were part of the resistance in Poland. He was one solitary man trudging, with tens of thousands of destitute and traumatized others, on a death march. He was a man who arrived in Canada with only five dollars in his pocket. He became a loving father, a man with deep faith, a good husband, a loyal friend, the kind of man who just kept doing the next thing that needed to get done.

Through him, I learned that resilience isn't about bending reality to one’s will, but embracing it and moving forward with an unshakeable spirit. In times when the world feels dark with global conflicts, climate disasters, and a consequential election looming south of our border—where a candidate for president is spewing the hateful rhetoric and lies—I’m drawn to my father’s legacy. To his instinct to always seek the light, though this is hard work for me.

Had I asked him, I know my father would have said that his resilience came from his faith, and it made him fearless. At the centre of his beliefs was a steadfast and deep-rooted trust in divine protection or deliverance from all threats, whether they arose from within or without. But I believe his resilience was forged in simpler stuff: an ordinary boyhood on Mirowski Square with loving parents, close friends from school, chatty family dinners, a favourite teacher, church on Sunday morning, victories at the finish line of a race, summer escapes to the countryside. Of course, if I had suggested this, he would have smiled and said he saw God’s hand in it all.

This house tells the story of a daughter of a woman who survived Nazi forced labour in Germany, one of a million Polish women (and almost as many Polish men) transported against their will and regarded as subhuman to be worked to death. She was one woman who came to Canada as part of a government-sponsored work program to resettle displaced people after the war.

I am the daughter of a refugee mother who wanted her children to be well-educated, with opportunities she never had. She wanted us to have successful, fulfilling careers and families of our own. She was determined to create a comfortable home. Above all, she was resolute that we would never know scarcity, hunger, or feel cold and scared. She wanted us to be safe, rooted in a peaceful country. By remaining silent about what she had endured, she shielded us from the emotional and physical trauma she had survived, determined that we wouldn't carry it forward or even know about it.

I felt her expectations to achieve what she so desperately wanted in the weight of her gaze—a look that spoke volumes. Even though she never said a word, I often felt I had fallen short—I chafed under those unspoken expectations. Now, years later, I have finally grasped what her expectations were.

It seems paradoxical that one can get to know a person better long after they are dead or find out something obvious about them only when it’s too late. I resented being the Polish immigrant girl in elementary school, mortified by an immigrant mom who seemed unsophisticated, couldn’t even write a note to the teacher—just a mom. And now, having uncovered her story, I am ashamed of my past disdain.

Nearly five years have passed since my last conversations with my father. Unexpectedly, these talks provided a road map guiding me to my mother’s story, even though my initial intention was a small project to preserve my father's last memories.

I followed this road map to understand my mother's stubborn silence. Sharing her story, even if she could find words for the unthinkable, would not have served her purpose. I have come to realize her expectations of me were born from the same hope of every immigrant or refugee in this country: that their child will have an easier life, a safer home, and more opportunities. An ordinary life.

Whenever I think about my mother’s story, a wave of emotions washes over me—compassion, gratitude, and relief as the last piece of my puzzle falls into place. It was the piece that had eluded me my entire life, the one I had given up on ever finding and didn’t think that I needed. I had grown accustomed to living without it. Yet, possessing it now and placing the piece down to complete my story is where my heart needed to go. I know now that the dreams and longings of my refugee mother have been fulfilled.

This journey also led me to understand that my parents' stories ran deep within my genetic memory. I discovered the clarifying power of personal narratives and how they intertwine to shape our shared past. Along the way, I immersed myself in a complex history lesson I never expected.

All of this unfolded when my father granted me access to the vault where my parents had safeguarded their memories. He bestowed a weighty inheritance: my own story, finally complete and understood.

More than fifty years have passed since I left my parents’ home. Full of dreams and ambitions, I ventured out into the world beyond. I left the small town of my childhood, my immigrant parents, the little girl in the plaid flannel pants who longed to be like everyone else, and I never wanted to look back. Until now.

I take a deep breath, finish my coffee, get up, and start my ordinary day.