Why Lwow?  Why does one have totally unreasonable longings?  Of course I blame my mother for Lwow.  That was the city of her dreams.  I have no idea how many times she visited that city but for many years, as a child, I thought that was where we came from.  Her songs were full of this fabulous city, where everyone was young and happy and in love.  She would sing with a bit of an accent, like real Lwowians would.  Wi Lwowi -  She spoke of the fun she had there, and why not?  After all she must have been in her late teens or early twenties when she visited Lwow.  Mother married Stanislaw when she was 24. 

I don't remember the story of how they met.  Something about a path that led by her home to another street and he frequented it.  Did he visit the boys in the neighboring family?  That would have been the home of mother's God-mother, Helena Halkiewicz.  There were four sons in that family.  Was Stah a friend of one of them?  Adam called Ada was the oldest, then there was Stanislaw, who died during the war and whose widow remained part of the family forever.  Zbyszek was next, perhaps he was the friend.  That he was a rascal there is no doubt.  Just the fact that he was a great pal of Jarosz testifies to that.  And then there are his letters to mother after they started communicating in their late sixties.  No woman was safe from him, not even one 30 years younger.  I do not have a photo of him in Mother's collection but he must have been a heart-breaker.  And he was a career military man. The rumor was that one summer which both he and Jarosz spent in Sokal he managed to get Joanna's head turned around, despite the fact that she was the young bride of Wlodek.  If I were writing a novel I probably would include a torrid love affair, a betrayal, perhaps... before her marriage.  What an interesting story of the young and very beautiful Ukrainian girl from the sticks visiting her married older sister in Sokal and just loving the vibrant life in this mini-town compared to her home village.   She caught the roving eye of many a young Turk  but only one was constant... a romantic melancholy music  teacher who played the violin and sang love songs to her.  Her heart was stolen by the golden-haired Zbyh but there was no proposal of marriage forthcoming...She married dependable and besotted Wlodek assuring she would never have to leave town.  She named her first-born and only son, Zbigniew.     Whatever was in her heart those two, Joanna and Wlodzimierz lived together for some forty years without being separated even for a day... she told me that herself, weeping after wujko Wlodek died in......  She was distraught at the future, of living probably another twenty years without him.   In actuality she lived another 40 years and died in 2010 the day before her 100th birthday.

Getting back to Mother and Stah there is no doubt he was head over heels about that lively girl.   He would have married her immediately but for the fact he had to help support his widowed mother and his two younger brothers.  He could not take a wife till his brothers were settled.  Olek the middle one became a policeman - which in the end cost him his life after the war broke out.  Franek the youngest decided on a military career as an Ulan.   I do have those formal photos of him in his uniform... what a dashing young man.  I suppose when the cavalry charged the German tanks in 1939 he was captured and thus spent the entire war in a German prison camp.   So, Maryska and Stah had a long engagement.  What a wonderful time they must have had.  Being engaged and very proper... both, especially Stah were very religious.  They went to balls, to parties, and sang in the local operetta company for many years.  Mother was a soprano well suited to those light operettas and musical comedies.  I have enough photos of Mother in costume to attest to that.  I cannot remember what kind of voice Stah had.  I love the photo of them holding each other so formally in costume, performing as lovers from some operetta.  Why is it when one is young one thinks all incoming information can be held in one's head and retrieved at will?   Why not pen or pencil... why not mark the darn photo with its significance... who, what, when, where.   Now it is all gone.  It can only become the stuff of the imagination and fabrication..  That can be truth also, can't it?  And it is fun daydreaming about these faraway events, places and people.