Rose Toms with the child she rescued, Elizabeth Lis.
Mother’s Day 2014
Generations. History has always interested me. The real people whose lives and often whose sacrifice directly affects the next generation. How quickly their stories are forgotten with the rapid passage of time, how great our debt.
On the left is a lady named Rose Toms. She was an orphan and knew no family life as a child. As a young woman she trained at Great Ormand Street Hospital. She set up babies home with a friend and cared for babies who were delicate or in need.
In war-torn London in 1943 a baby girl was born to a Polish refugee who had already lost her two young sons in a Siberian labour camp. She was determined to fight for her country's freedom and so took her newborn daughter to Rose Toms' home to be cared for. She never returned and Rose raised the baby alone. Elizabeth Lis is in the right of the photo, and was my mother.
Behind every picture lies a story.
Happy Mother’s day to all those women, past and present, who greatly influenced the lives of children they never bore, for the good. You have helped shape history.
I first posted this on Mother’s day 2014, weeks after my mum had died, and before I had traced her birth mother learning the story behind her sacrifice. It turned out Elizabeth was her mother’s only child, surrendered to another so that she could continue to fight in the Polish Army. My life has been shaped by these 3 women, directly and indirectly. Whose lives am I shaping?
“I didn’t just give her away, I risked my happiness for her life.”