REMEMBERING HALINA

Something My Mom Would Do

A tribute to her soft heart

My own version of Duduś the squirrel. Photo by author-all rights reserved.

I open every day with a round of reading. My circuit includes the New York Times and Los Angeles Times at least. Later in the day, if I get peckish and need a news snack, I might borrow my husband’s subscription and peek at the Washington Post.

Tihs morning, against all my better instincts, I clicked on this article in the New York Times. Then, feeling particularly masochistic and knowing it would tear me apart, I watched the eight-minute documentary.

Opinion | My Mother Has Two Sons: Me and a Squirrel

It tore me apart.

This woman in the short film could have been my mom forty or fifty years ago. That was a time when she was deeply attached to animals both wild and tame. She tried to save several creatures in distress when I was a child — several birds, a few mice, even a nest of baby rabbits.

My Mom, Halina, was rarely successful in saving wild animals or strays, unlike the woman in the documentary, Mrs. Krawczyk, who raised an infant squirrel to a fully functioning adult. Though Mom…