As kids, Lillian and I were sharing a sled at Kiwanis park and on one particularly fast run, we flew right into the creek. There was shock, exhilaration and excitement - a lot like childbirth.
My love to Lillian and Luciana. What a beautiful pair.
I'm so happy for you. Grandchildren are the best! I know! But, I have to say, it is so strange to see a former professor who is stuck in time in my mind, to be holding a grandchild. You should still be in your 40's walking between the desks in Coleman Hall encouraging all of us to open our minds and write about it. Congrats dear friend and mentor!
I was born in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II, and came with my parents Jan and Tekla and my sister Donna to the United States as Displaced Persons in 1951. My Polish Catholic parents had been slave laborers in Nazi Germany. Growing up in the immigrant and DP neighborhoods around Humboldt Park in Chicago, I met Jewish hardware store clerks with Auschwitz tattoos on their wrists, Polish cavalry officers who still mourned for their dead horses, and women who walked from Siberia to Iran to escape the Russians. My poems try to remember them and their voices.
These poems have appeared in my chapbook Language of Mules and in both editions of Charles Fishman’s anthology of American poets on the Holocaust, Blood to Remember.
Since retiring from teaching American Literature in 2005, I've written two new books about my parents. My new poems about them appear in my books Echoes of Tattered Tongues (Aquila Polonica, 2017) and True Confessions (Darkhouse Books, 2019).
14 comments:
Hi, John--thanks for sharing. What a cutie! And everyone looks very happy. Enjoy!
Jane
Congratulations!
Hi John,
She's beautiful! You and Linda look like proud grandparents!
Rich
CONGRATULATIONS!! Gorgeous baby! Joy, relief! Hope Lillian is comfortable or as comfy as poss and enjoying her new sweet pea!
Congratulations. . .how nice to see! Hail to the computer age!
Hi, John. Lisa Childress here, under deep cover of anonymity.
Congratulations to Lillian and Linda and you on the new arrival! :o)
I'm so glad everything went well and Lillian's ordeal is over. She looked really Big in those previous pictures, and I am sure she was uncomfortable!
Babies give us hope that the world may actually turn out all right, don't they?
Congratulations, John!
You already have nicknames for the baby?
Lillian doesn't have a name for the baby yet but we do have a nickname: Lulu.
Congrats to all.
She'a a beauty -- a real Lulu...
Thanks for the pics.
Bruce K.
Congratulations to all! A first grandchild is a celebration!
Christina
As kids, Lillian and I were sharing a sled at Kiwanis park and on one particularly fast run, we flew right into the creek. There was shock, exhilaration and excitement - a lot like childbirth.
My love to Lillian and Luciana. What a beautiful pair.
I'm so happy for you. Grandchildren are the best! I know! But, I have to say, it is so strange to see a former professor who is stuck in time in my mind, to be holding a grandchild. You should still be in your 40's walking between the desks in Coleman Hall encouraging all of us to open our minds and write about it. Congrats dear friend and mentor!
Oma, thanks for the note. I hate to say it but the only place I feel my grandfatherliness is in my knees.
All those years of running and biking and nordic tracking have chipped away whatever keeps my knees working.
Other than that I'm still telling studentsto keep their minds open but now I do it online teaching for for EIU's English Dept.
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