Halina Leszczynska
It's a portrait of me, Halina Leszczynska. This picture was taken at a birthday party which my son organized for me in the Banja Luka restaurant in Warsaw, in 2003. My birthday is on 27th August.
I live with my mother. My grandson visits me from time to time. What do I miss? Company. All my friends, every last one, have left. I had good relations with all my friends from work, but we're all getting older. One is sick, another one is ailing, this one is minding her grandchildren, so we don't meet. Each one has something that bugs her. For me Sunday is the worst day of the week. Now it doesn't matter as much, since I've retired, because all the days of the week are like Sundays. I'd like to go somewhere, but I have nowhere to go. I don't go to the theater, because my hearing is not good and even my hearing aid doesn't help much. I can't go to the cinema alone. I can't go out for a walk alone and I don't have anyone to walk with me. I have one friend, but her legs hurt, so she doesn't go out at all, a second one has some other problems, the third one walks with a cane. I'm like a pioneer among them, like a scout. So I mostly spend time with my mother.
It's not a nice life now, not nice. I've never felt as badly in Poland as I do now. I'm terrified of what will happen if those Kaczynski brothers get to power and this League of Polish Families. I don't watch the TV nowadays, I've stopped buying newspapers. I've always had leftist views, so I'm disappointed on all accounts. The only thing I do read is books. It's my only entertainment now, I really can't watch television, I feel disgusted with it. With this Mlodziez Wszechpolska ? I just recently read how before the war: this All-Polish Youth beat up Jewish students in Lwow. I am simply afraid of that. I am not happy.
Sometimes I wonder if staying here in 1968 was the right thing to do. Because all my friends had left. Why didn't I leave? Maybe because my mother and sister were here. Maybe because my son could have been conscripted into the army. Maybe because I was afraid to go alone, because each one of my friends went with her husband, they had good professions, engineers, doctors. I didn't have enough courage. Do I regret it? Perhaps I do.