My Mother

My Mothers Name is Wilhelmina (Minnie) Giesewski Abramowski Brown. She was born in Selbongen, East Prussia Germany in May of 1912. Everybody knew her as Minnie, but her family called her Mienku. She had a twin sister, named Anna, who only lived for 4 days as my grandmother was severely sick with tuberculosis. My grandmother died when my mother was only 4 years old and her father died when she was 14 of a massive heart attack. She told me that they ran outside in the snow to get it to put it on his chest but when they got back in the house he was dead. My grandfather Giesewski was a highway engineer. He was a very wealthy man. My mother was born with TB and had been sick most of her growing up years until she was seventeen. She had been in and out of sanitariums during those years and family members were fighting over who would be taking care of her when she was little because they wanted my grandfather's money. Finally my grandfather's sister Wilhelmina Piotrowski said "enough!", that she would be in charge and take care of my mother. And she did. She taught my mother everything she knew about housekeeping, laundry, cooking. My mother even tied her sheets, pillow cases and towels in ribbons, she ironed everything even underwear.

My mother came to America in 1930 through the Pananma Canal and landed in San Pedro California. Her sister Amelia (Aunt Molly) and her husband Uncle Fred Dellenbach sponsored her to come to America.
She was 18 years old.

A special quality about my mother is that she was a hard worker, she was never idle. She loved working in her yard and won several awards for having the most beautiful landscaped yard when we lived in Westchester, which is a suburb of Los Angeles. She also did a lot of hand work, crocheting, embroidery as she would watch television and even before we had television. She loved to can fruit, chicken etc. She taught me many great and wonderful things even when she was so sick in bed as I was growing up. Her hands were busy even up until the time she passed away. One of my mother's traditions that is still being carried on by my daughter, Cindy, and my niece, Jennifer, and by myself, are her crocheted potholders and her Streusel Kuchen.

One of the things she would tell us children when we would fight or have an argument, was to love one another and that the day would come when we would cry for each other because we would not live close together and we would miss each other and we would want to take away the hurt if one of us was sick or having a problem. Another phrase she would always say was "ach du meine gita!" which means "oh my gosh!" in English, and "If you would be so kind... "

She always wore a dress, nylons, shoes and an apron, and always had a hankey or kleenex in her apron pocket. I guess to wipe away our running noses. She loved fashion and was very clean on herself, but we did not have a lot of money as we were living in a time of the 2nd world war. She knew how to save and make a dollar stretch. She was a good wife and mother always striving to do the right thing for her family. We have a very different taste in shoes and I never liked her choice of shoes even in her later life.