It was in the early seventies when she left her tiny village (the only home she ever knew) at the tender age of eighteen.

A collection of dated German Vogues, hand sewn dresses and beloved pumps filled her shabby suitcase. Young and ambitious she yearned for city lights and traveled halfway across her birth country to find them. She bid goodbye to the picturesque Polish village near the Lithuanian border and raced towards Big City on the Baltic Sea, a stone's throw away from glamorous Sweden. At the time she thought it would be the biggest move of her life.

Despite her mother's advice, who wanted her near, she rented a room in Big City and enrolled at the university. Her new found freedom was liberating. In dimly lit pubs she hummed along to Bowie, Beatles and Billy Joel not understand their words but gracefully moving to the beat. That delicate grace caught the attention of many. New to Big City she started dating.

On one particular evening her date opened the doors to the MIT of Poland student's pub for an evening of dancing. They met friends and laughed the night away. The evening was cut short. Her date had a family emergency which required his immediate attention. He turned to his most trusted classmate and asked, "Will you take care of my girlfriend tonight? Make sure no one steals her away."

"Yes, I will take care of her." The trusted classmate replied.

The classmate, a native of Big City, was a man who became an entrepreneur at the age of seven and earned his way into the elite engineering university. He was both handsome and worldly. It took just one night for her to fall in love with him although for months she, taking her mother's advice this time, played hard to get.

By summer's end when the university students were escaping Big City, they were a couple madly in love.

After graduation he became Big City's youngest engineer. She wore her beloved pumps to construction sites as a manager. In the evenings they dreampt about the world outside of communistic Poland as they flipped through her dated German Vogues.

In 1976 they married.

In 1977 I was born in Gdansk, Poland.

In 1978 he left us.

To be continued...