Adorable girl and her Mother

This is a picture of my Aunt Emily and her mother, or as I called her, Busia.  My Aunt recently passed away and I thought I would do a little piece of art featuring my own relatives- for a change.  I also wanted to give something to my cousin Claudia, the daughter of Emily.  I took this image from a much larger picture of my father's family, nine members altogether.  I love working with these types of  vintage images and this one featuring my own family  was very

special to me.  Since my family is Polish I added a small map of Poland and a scrap of  music from a Polish Christmas carol. My sister and I used to sing Polish carols every Christmas season as we learned them in school.  Although my Busia looks very stern in this picture, she really was the sweetest and most gentle person.  She would make me graham cracker "sandwiches", with a thick layer of butter in between-Yum!

I also wanted to share a little story about my Busia as told to me by my Uncle Eugene.  My Busia grew up in Poland in the 1880's and lived on a farm with her large family who were tenant farmers. Due to their extreme poverty my Busia was sent out to be a maid at the landowner's house. She was a scullery maid and  began when she was only 9 years old, washing the dishes and pots and pans.  Later as a teen she came down with small pox.  This left her face very scarred. Her sisters worried that no one would wish to marry her.  They knew of a man  from a nearby town that had emigrated to America and wished to marry a Polish girl.  They thought this would be a good solution for my Busia.  So they packed her up and sent her to America. She met my grandfather and they were married.  They had seven children. One of them was my father.  So that is my little story.  I like to think that I and my sisters inherited some of the spunk and hardiness as shown by my Busia. Her maiden name was Antonina Klazura and she lived until age 103!