“My mother and her sister went to school and to market in their village for more than four years without ever saying a word about the treasure hidden under the floorboards!  They were secret keepers!”- Andre Paczocha

Secret Keepers

“We’re you able to visit your mother over Mother’s Day weekend?”  I asked Andre.

“Not on Mother’s Day.”  He answered.  “I called her Friday and left a message.  She hasn’t called me back yet.  I’m sure she’s just busy helping Ukrainian Refugees where she lives in Poland.”

“I thought she was here in the United States.”  I responded in surprise.

“She was.”  He continued.  “But she went back to Poland with my stepfather, right before the borders were closed for COVID.  Almost as soon as they arrived he contracted the disease and passed away.  She contracted the disease shortly thereafter and wasn’t able to return.  Now, she’s decided to stay because she wants to help.  She’s a person that will give everything she has to another person, if they’re in need, even if she could use it for herself.  She’s done that since she was a young child in World War II.”

When Andre’s mother was a child, growing up in the same town she resides in now, her family took in four Jewish children and hid them in their home for the entire war.  They took up just enough floor boards, in their small one-story-home, and then scooped up sufficient dirt for the girls to lay flat on their backs, their noses slightly below the wood.  The four frightened girls would lay there hiding quietly every day, all day, as part of a bonded effort to keep their jointly held secret. 

This kind of secret keeping is in stark contrast to what one person, a teacher of children, said to me earlier in the week. “If you want to know anything about what goes on in a household, just talk to the children who live there.  They’ll tell you much more than you want to know.  They’ll tell you everything and anything; all the family secrets.”  Luckily, such was not the case for the children living above the floor boards during that gloomy World War II period of Polish and world history.

“My mother and her sister went to school and to market in their village for more than four years without ever saying a word about the treasure hidden under the floorboards!  They were secret keepers!”  Andre said with his sixty-something eyes brimming with tears.  And, his mother, now just shy of ninety-years-old, is still a keeper of secrets.  Secrets she has passed on to her son, as well as others.

“My mother has suffered through many hard things!”  Andre confided.  “But, she’s allowed her trials to lead her to live in personal peace and happiness through it all.  That’s because she learned life’s greatest secret as a child.  ‘Don’t gild yourself in things that have no life and let the hungry, and the needy, and the naked, and the sick and the afflicted to pass by you, without noticing or caring for them!’”

“We’re you able to visit your mother over Mother’s Day weekend?”  I had asked Andre as we drove to a hospital to attend to the needs of someone I barely knew.

“Not on Mother’s Day.”  He answered.  “I called her Friday and left a message. She hasn’t called me back yet.  I’m sure she’s just busy helping Ukrainian Refugees where she lives in Poland.”

That’s when I thought, “She’s still passing life’s greatest secret on to thousands more!  Even at almost ninety-years of age she’s still a secret keeper; a keeper, and spreader, of life’s greatest secret.”