Ala and Edziu Gemrot and Krysia Maultrie

Ala and Edziu Gemrot and Krysia Maultrie

This is a picture of my children: Ala, Krysia and Edziu. I wanted to have that picture taken and send it to my brother, Zygmunt in England, and to my sister Malinka who lives in Israel. The girls are wearing dresses that Zygmunt sent them as presents. I wanted him to see how they look in them. Edziu is dressed in a suit that I made. The picture was taken at the best photo studio in Wieliczka, ?Foto Gliwa?. Ala was born in 1945, Krysia in 1950 and Edziu in 1951. I wasn't that stupid to have one child after another, but somehow it worked out that Edziu was born one year after Krysia. When Ala was one year old she got sick with Heine-Medina, because there was an epidemic in Poland at that time. She spent several months receiving treatment in a hospital in Warsaw. I had to be there with her, because they didn't have enough staff and those children were there after the epidemic. They were treating my Ala there, but they had some stupid method: x-rays. The child had to lie down on this table, face down and I had to put on rubber gloves, because those were x-rays, and a protective apron and I was supposed to hold her bottom and her head, so she wouldn't move around. It was about the backbone, the backbone was supposed to be exposed to the x-rays. It didn't hurt at all, but this machine made a strange sound which made her nervous, because she shouted at the top of her voice. And she flung herself about, I wasn't able to hold her down, because those gloves were so heavy and clumsy and the apron weighed me down. Dear God, I just wished this would all be over, because I couldn't handle it any longer. So I took off the apron, threw away the gloves and held her with my bare hands. The doctor came in, looked at me, outraged and said, 'What are you doing?' I explained that I couldn't do it. 'Do you know what you've done?' - he said. 'You could become infertile.' So I just asked him, 'Only?' And he said, 'Not enough for you?' So I didn't say anything more to him. I came back home with the child, I didn't say anything to my husband. Well, so I won't have any more children, well, that's fine with me. I thought I'd have just two and that would be good. And it turned out I was 'so infertile' that I got pregnant the following year. And that's how Edzio was born in 1951. It was good, because when he was born I said 'Edmund' and my mother-in-law came and said: 'please, use Franciszek for his middle name.' So I said, 'Very well.' And when Edziu started growing up Grandma loved him very much, because he was such a clever child. So she used to say to him, 'You're not Edmund, you're Franciszek, because I want you to be like my husband, your grandfather.' Father-in-law was already dead by that time. And when Edziu started talking, he liked it very much when I told him, 'Edziu, there's company, please go and introduce yourself.' He would go, straighten his jacket, hold out his little hand and say, 'Jo jestem Jan Cisek.' [literally 'I am Jan Cisek.' He wanted to say 'Franciszek', but couldn't pronounce the word].
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