TIME TO RETURN
JUSTYNA ZBROJA
It was the first time I had cried during a debate in the Seym. When the MPs of the Law and Justice party, soon after enacting the bill by the Seym, in relation to introducing the program ‘Family 500+’, were chanting: ‘Fa-mi-ly, fa-mi-ly!’. Now I know that the best place for Poles to live is Poland and it is not all only about money. It is all about public admitting the fact that a married couple who have too many children is not pathology but, on contrary – an incontrovertible value
As far as I remember, there was not any good atmosphere for families with many children in Poland. The 70s of the XX century were the years of triumph of spirals and contraceptive pills – a pseudo-progress (the first contraceptive pill appeared in the USA in 1950 and got to Polish chemist’s in 1966).
In a small town, in which I was born, there were only a few families with many children. They were considered as pathology. I remember this outrage when my mum from the so-called normal family gave a birth to her fourth baby and my sister, at the age of 39. These malicious hints that she was not modern. Luckily she had her own worldview and quite a strong character, so she did very little out of it. She fed all her children with her breast, as her nature and intuition suggested her so, although a bottle to feed a baby was fashionable.
Communism passed away but as for a favourable way of looking at family with many children little has changed. It still was a symbol of a failure, backwardness. Indeed, one had to focus on organizing one’s life in the communist chaos, pushing one’s way to the success, doing career.
Years passed, governments changed, but the social belief that family with many children was unwanted, did not change. When in 2000 I got married and our first daughter was born, and another one after 6 years, our acquaintances and most of our family – said that there quite many of us. Indeed among our close and further acquaintances there was not another model of family.
Media including women’s press insisted that a woman can be happy only when she is doing her career. It is not important what kind of work she would do, but only when she leaves her house, then she can feel satisfied. And, obviously, it is more difficult to leave one’s house full of many children.
I know only one woman, my cousin, who did not get succumb to this propaganda and found her happiness, having born 4 children and brought them up at home till their school age. But she lives in a forest house with her husband and she never had TV by her choice, or was not interested in women’s press.
Paradise without God, that is, hell
9 years ago, in search of a better life, we moved to Denmark.
The first months were a wave of delight. We felt that we were in paradise – a rich society, honest people (as it seemed to us then), houses without fences. Farmers who put out their goods on roads, with small boxes for money aside, as it was obvious that everyone would pay. It took a long time for my husband doctor to get used to the fact that in hospital, where there are tens patients a day, nobody will steal somebody’s wallet in a cloakroom. Perfect. Till we found out the truth about the society. Gradually, month by month, year after year, we started finding out that paradise without God is hell.
This society, which appreciates children’s rights so much, has got blood of innocent babies on its hands. We have been touched by it particularly since my husband set up his own business. As a GP he meets with women once a week, who wants to have abortion done (in Denmark about 18 thousand babies are killed every year). He is often forced to do euthanasia which is organized by daughters and sons of elderly people. Luckily in Denmark there is a clause of conscience, similarly as in other EU countries and a doctor can refuse to murder children and elderly people.
Here elderly people are not treated. The so-called affectionate care is recommended which practically means not bringing help. And when an elderly person is too troublesome, a bit more morphine is injected and ‘the problem ends’.
It happens so in the society which appreciates somebody only when he is useful, when he is one of modes in a machine powering economy. Because, in fact, it is all about money. Keeping a patient who mostly dies in an elderly people’s house costs a lot. It is costly for the state and family.
My husband cannot agree to it. He explains that a man’s life should be saved till the end, he sends an ill person to hospital, does not direct a woman for abortion. He often heard words said angrily that he does not know what it is all about as he comes from a different culture – implicitly speaking: from the worse and primitive one. Then he answers calmly: ‘Yes, I am from a different culture, from the culture of life’.
Upside down
We were looking for money in Denmark and we found God. Indeed, we considered ourselves as Catholics, but our faith was shallow. In Denmark we met a priest from a neo-catechumenal community who turned our life upside down. What had been important for us stopped being essential, and what had been on a margin before, became the most important. God in the first place, that is, everything in the right place. The One whom we trusted, gave us two more children. We opened ourselves up to a new life and we started feeling free thanks to it. ‘God, please, decide’ – we told Him, knowing that He is always right. We met families from a neo-catechumenal community in Aalborg (in the north of Denmark) who have a lot of children and are happy and satisfied. Once it seemed to us, that being happy is organizing one’s life comfortably, having as few problems as possible, as well as financial security. Now I know that it is not true which the world tells us.
In Denmark, a favourable atmosphere for children is only alleged. Indeed, the state gives more or less the equal sum of money to 500 zlotys for a child, but it is hard to speak about favourable atmosphere when young people at schools are persuaded to believe that the right for abortion is one of their basic rights. Here no ill or disabled babies are born as they are simply killed in their mothers’ wombs.
Demagogy against life beings in the primary school, in classes of sexual education, when little girls put on condoms on a banana. This way of depriving children of their innocence is terrifying.
Therefore, we know that now the best place for upbringing our daughters is Poland. A country in which there is respect for life. We do not deceive ourselves that when we return, we will be abundant in richness, as we do not mean it.
It is time to return, 9 years on a ‘desert’ is enough.
AA
„Niedziela” 13/2016