john guzlowski

john guzlowski
Location
Danville, Virginia, USA
Birthday
June 22
Bio
I was born in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II, and came with my Polish Catholic parents Jan and Tekla and my sister Donna to the United States as Displaced Persons in 1951. My 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. I write about these people.

MY RECENT POSTS

JUNE 21, 2012 9:24PM

Will You Still Need me, Will You Still Read Me When I'm 64?

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For three birthdays in a row (59th, 60th, 61st), I posted a birthday blog.  I enjoyed it--sharing a photo or a poem and telling what I was up to.  The 59th was all about moving to Danville and Linda and me starting our retired life here near Lillian.  The 60th was about publishing my book Lightning and Ashes and finishing my first novel.  The 61st was about Luciana's birth and what that meant to me.

I didn't write one for my 62nd birthday.  That's the year where I had my open heart surgery a few weeks before I turned 62.  I didn't feel much like writing about that birthday and what it meant to me.  I had written a lot in the previous couple of months about my heart troubles and didn't feel like writing after the surgery.  It's not hard to explain.  My mind was focused on my heart, what it had gone through, the pain I still felt, the weakness that kept me sitting in a recliner for much of each day.

On my 63rd birthday, I felt better of course, but writing about it didn't seem right.  Maybe I didn't want to press my luck, hooting about how good I felt.  Maybe I was still hearing the advice my mom gave me when I was a kid: It was bad luck to let the world know you were doing okay. Anyway, I didn't write about it, and didn't feel guilty about it, so maybe not blogging about it was the right thing.

So why am I writing now?  Telling you about my 64th birthday?

I'm not sure.  When you get to be 64, you get a little fuzzy headed.

________________________________

The above photo -- going from your right -- is of Lillian Calendrillo Guzlowski (33), Mabel Calendrillo (87), Tony Calendrillo (87), Linda Calendrillo (60), Luciana Calendrillo Guzlowski (3), and me (64).

If you want to read my previous birthday posts and see the photos, click on each of the following: 59, 60, 61.


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