Continued from Part 1: The Story of Me.

I was only twelve months old when my father found us an apartment. A building whose white exterior was a filthy communist shade of grey after years of neglect. It became "home". We were to share this one bedroom walk-up with another family. There were no telephones to use for the times I cried out Tata wondering where my father has gone.

The only reminder of the man in our lives arrived in the form of packages from a distant land my mother called She-ka-go. The insides exposed a hodgepodge of items collected from a place my father, in letters, described as a sale inside a garage. Mostly all clothes, my mother rationed the items saving the nicest for me and sold the rest in illegal jarmarks (flea markets) during communism, just to get by.

Months flew by. The man I once called Tata became The Man in She-ka-go. The man who put his promising engineering career on hold to wash the floors of O'Hare airport later finding a more profitable career of installing siding on suburban homes. With each passing season came more packages, promises and prayers. "Where is my Tata?" I asked my mother skipping alongside her always graceful strides towards the demeaning bread lines, where we waited for rationed portions of food.

"Your Tata is the most wonderful man in the world."

"What does he look like?"

"He is handsome. And strong."

"Is he old?"

"No, he is young and hard working."

"Does that man over there, look like him?"

"Oh no. Much more handsome. Imagine..."

This game occupied us while we waited for countless hours each day.

"Ding Dong." "Ding Dong." I mimicked the sound of a door bell ringing hoping it was The Man from She-ka-go. "Ding Dong" was one of my first words. First words that my father, busy climbing ladders a million miles away ensuring our future, never heard. After a year apart he became the stranger that I apprehensively hugged at the Warsaw airport. With him came pockets full of American dollars and a future so bright - they celebrated it by purchasing a Russian TV set.

Nine months later my sister Kasia was born.

Nine months later martial law froze Polands' borders.

With the borders paralyzed my parents placed their two sleeping daughters on top of a mound of clothes in the back of a green Fiat and drove throughout the night seeking freedom.

To be continued...