"Moja kolezanka. Moja kolezanka. Moja kolezanka." She sang to me as we skipped hand-in-hand, oblivious to the outside world, on our way home after standing in communistic bread lines. "My girlfriend. My girlfriend. My girlfriend." My father left us in Gdansk (seeking opportunity in America during the late seventies before fully immigrating) all alone, it was just the two of us, for well over one year. I was too young to remember but old enough to understand.

It was just mommy and me.

"We are girlfriends. We are girlfriends. We are girlfriends." I sing to Fifi draping her arm around my neck as I skip in my designer boots on the way to Target for just a roll of paper towels and $87.43 worth of needless things. The setting has changed for me in the last 30 years; but, the plot is the same.

It's just the toddler and I.

It should be illegal to spend this much one-on-one time with someone you love. "I so was love with you." My mother reminisces in her broken English, about the time we were alone. With my other children occupied in school I am able to whisper sweet nothings into Fifi's ear, move onto lingering in her neck and beg for another kiss all day long.  Surrounded by a silent house, it's just-the-two-of-us. For thirty hours each week, one hundred and fifty hours each month she is all mine to do as I please.  She's my little kolezanka.

Kolezanka (coal-ah-john-kah) = girlfriend