Remembering My Dear Mother

Today is October 22nd and it is my Mom's birthday. She would be 78 years old today, but, five years ago she quietly passed away from pancreatic cancer. I have missed her every day since she has been gone.

                                                                                Teresa
                                She was a beautiful woman, a wonderful mother and a loving wife.

My mother grew up in Warsaw, Poland, but during World War II, her family escaped from a concentration camp and fled to Brazil. As a fourteen year-old girl attending a French Catholic School, located in Rio de Janiero, she became very interested in art.

At twenty-two years old, she moved to Washington D.C. and met my Dad. They soon married and later moved to Connecticut. My mother saved all of her early art work but hid the drawings in an old trunk in the attic. When I was old enough to secretly climb the rickety stairs, I discovered these drawings tucked away in the trunk. For some reason, a charcoal drawing of a cozy little cottage captured my attention. I remember sitting in that dusty attic just staring at that drawing and imagining how it might have looked inside the cottage. How was it decorated and who lived there? Years later, I confessed to my Mom that I had found her drawings, and surprisingly, she let me keep them because she realized how much I loved them. Of all the drawings, however, the cottage has always been my favorite. I will find the perfect spot for it in my new home.

                                    Perhaps this was my inspiration for Catch Meadow Cottage.

This is another drawing my mother did at the age of fourteen.

    This is a Portuguese fisherman. 

This is a drawing she made as a gift for her father, to encourage him not to drink too much. 

I get dizzy just looking at it. Clearly, she had quite a sense of humor at such a young age.

 

Here are some drawings of fruit and flowers she created around the same time.

Here is my Mom in the place she loved the most......her garden.

      Happy Birthday Mom. I miss you so very much.