Wearing Boots to Boil Water

A story of the cold apartment that built us

Krakow, Poland

When I was born, Poland was cracking open; one brick at a time.

The Solidarity movement had started whispering its rebellion into factory floors and kitchen tables, and the steel grip of communism was loosening, just barely. It was still gray. Still rationed. Still heavy. But hope had begun to flicker like the thin, orange flame on the stovetop of my parents’ first apartment.

That apartment if you could even call it that sat perched awkwardly on the top of someone else’s house. A roof over a roof. Not in the quaint, Pinteresty way we might romanticize today. No, this was the kind of place where the wind punched through the walls and whistled through the cracked windowpanes. My mother wore winter boots to cook. Not for fashion. For survival.

She told me that detail once, as if it were just a funny story. “You know, I had to wear boots while making soup,” she said, chuckling. “Your father could see his own breath in the hallway.” But I’ve never forgotten that sentence. Wearing boots to boil water. There’s a metaphor in there I haven’t stopped chasing.

My Mother Was the Oldest Daughter of a Poor Peasant Family

And that meant something back then. It meant responsibility before desire. It meant helping raise her younger siblings when she was still a child herself. It meant folding herself into roles too tight for her body: caretaker, translator, emotional shield.

She had four brothers and sisters. My father, on the other hand, had fourteen. Yes, fourteen. A number so large it felt fictional to me as a child. Dad grew up fast too, but in a different way on the streets, behind the wheel of whatever borrowed or broken-down vehicle he could drive. By the time they met, he was already 15 years older than her. He had stories she couldn’t imagine and disappointments he didn’t talk about. But together, they built something out of scarcity.

My mother was just starting out as a schoolteacher when I came into the world. My father, a brand-new taxi driver, trying to navigate both potholes and politics. We had no money. No insulation. No roadmap.

But we had the beginnings of change.

Solidarity Wasn’t Just a Movement. It Was My Inheritance.

Most people talk about their family trees. I talk about a revolution. Because my childhood was planted in that fragile window between dictatorship and democracy. I was born while the entire country was holding its breath, unsure whether it would tip forward or fall back. We were a country in labor, trying to birth something freer, fairer, more human.

And in many ways, my mother was doing the same thing.

She was trying to birth a new version of herself while also birthing me.

Not just as a mother, but as a woman who believed in books more than brooms, who stayed up late correcting spelling mistakes in notebooks from children whose fathers drank too much and whose mothers were too exhausted to help with homework.

I don’t think she had a lot of dreams back then; there wasn’t room for them. But I think, secretly, she hoped that life could get warmer. That her daughter might one day cook barefoot, in a home with heat.

The Cold Builds Character. That’s What She Always Said.

And I used to hate that phrase. Because I didn’t want character. I wanted comfort.

But now, decades later, I get it. The cold apartment was more than just a setting. It was a training ground. It taught her to move with discipline, not drama. To keep going, even when her fingers were numb and her belly wasn’t full. It taught her to build something from scratch; even if all she had were bricks of frozen potatoes and rationed flour.

My mom didn’t teach me resilience by lecturing. She taught me by surviving.

And not in a performative way. There were no Instagram quotes. Just quiet acts of grit. She put on her boots and stirred the soup. She taught other people’s children how to read. She taught me how to notice.

I Remember Sitting in Her Classroom Once

It smelled like chalk and worn sweaters. She introduced me as her daughter, and I watched her become this whole other person: confident, direct, warm. The kind of woman who could command a room with just her presence. The kind of woman who knew the value of education; not because it led to prestige, but because it was freedom.

She never got to study abroad. She never had a sabbatical. But she read everything. She memorized poems. She could recite Mickiewicz and translate Shakespeare and explain the rules of passive voice better than any native English speaker I’ve met.

And at home? She boiled water in boots.

I Think About Her a Lot Now, Especially Here in Poland

Now that I’ve returned. Now that I’m not just a visitor but a daughter tracing old footsteps, trying to understand where I come from. I walk the cracked sidewalks she once walked with grocery bags heavy on her arms. I stand in front of the apartment building she once cleaned on weekends to make extra money. I run my hand along the peeling wallpaper in my aunt’s hallway and feel the texture of my lineage.

Sometimes I wonder what she would have become if she had more. If she didn’t have to be so brave all the time. If she had lived in a home where the kitchen was warm and she could have just exhaled.

But Maybe That’s Not the Right Question.

Maybe the better question is:

What did she become despite having so little?

And the answer is: a woman who raised a daughter who writes. Who feels. Who believes in warmth and words and generational repair. A woman who made sure I knew my worth didn’t come from marrying well or dressing pretty or knowing how to hold my tongue.

She didn’t say those things outright. But she lived them. And now, I live them too.

There’s a Strange Power in Remembering

In going back, not just geographically, but emotionally. Every time I write about her, about that cold apartment, about the steam rising in the air while her boots thudded softly against the cracked linoleum floor, I’m reweaving our history. I’m thawing something that was frozen for decades.

Because my story didn’t start in a boardroom, or a classroom, or an airport lounge.

It started in a frigid kitchen, in a makeshift apartment, above someone else’s house. With a woman who wore boots to cook because she had no other choice and who still managed to serve love in every bowl.

So Here’s What I Know Now:

Sometimes the greatest acts of rebellion aren’t loud or visible. They’re quiet, daily, relentless.

Like showing up to teach.
Like staying when it’s easier to leave.
Like cooking soup in your boots and pretending it’s no big deal.

My mother didn’t lead a revolution.

But she lived one.

And that’s the heat I carry with me now.

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