Before we came to Canada in 1951, when I was three, my parents and I spent a year at refugee camp (难民营) in Austria. We had escaped from what was then called Czechoslovakia. My parents had already lost their livelihood once to the Nazi. Mummy was freed from the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen and spent the years after the war trying to find her family, only to discover she was the only survivor. She met my father in a small town outside Prague. They married and had me in 1948. When we arrived in Montreal, everything we owned was contained in an army trunk and a couple of army blankets. Mummy bought an old sewing machine and some inexpensive materials and using patterns in magazines, taught herself to sew. Her hands were always going, making something. She learned English by singing along to the hit song as she worked.
For me, high school was a lonely time. My mother worried that I'd never come out of my shell so she signed me up for classes at the Montreal Children's Theatre. That's where I found my voice with her strong faith in me, Mummy had opened a door. Although she was an educated woman, I never heard my mother said “This is what I gave up for you.” She was always there for my younger brother and me. When I sat in the kitchen with her, I felt safe. When she made soup or sewed a ballet costume for me, it was all a gift, a labor of love. She wanted to make us happy. For a long time, I had a picture hanging in the kitchen saying “Put your heart into it.” I grew up with that phrase. Mummy taught that lesson by example, and it has become my own work ethic(职业道德).
