Yesterday, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, I wrote about my four Irish great-grandparents. They were young Irish men and women who came to America as immigrants, not as refugees. They weren't driven out of Ireland, fearing for their lives. They were driven out of Ireland by the poverty of the land, which could only support so many members of any large family. The rest had to leave. Mine left for America.
One of my great-grandmothers, Bridget Trainor, brought everything she possessed with her in a small trunk, a trunk - now 150 years old give or take - that my sister Trish still uses.
The other side of my family, the German immigrants, weren't refugees either. They came for the same reason the Irischers did: economic opportunity that wasn't available to them in their large families in their small farming communities.
But they were closer to being refugees than my Irish antecedents were.
My German grandparents, Magdalena (Folker) and Jacob Wolf, my mother a toddler in tow, emigrated from Romania in the 1920's. My grandfather, a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had survived trench warfare in World War I. Several of his brothers - he came from a large family, mostly boys - weren't so lucky.
Strapped to the undercarriage of a train using his heavy belt, he made his way back to the little town of Neue Banat, which was an entirely German-ethnic own, only to find it was now, with the divvying up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, part of Romania, and now called something else. (I can't find the spelling. It's something like Penata Nou.)
So my grandparents saved up, packed up everything they had, and left the once and future war-torn Europe for Chicago, by way of Ellis Island.
They took everything they had with them in a large, sturdy trunk that my grandfather had made by hand and painted battle-ship gray. I knew that trunk quite well. For years, it sat in the basement of our family house, repository for cartons full of Christmas decorations. Opening the lid each December, and there was a delightful smell of balsam and must.
What did they bring with them? Their clothing, and whatever portable possessions they had in the small farm house they were leaving. I'm guessing that there were probably feather pillows and a duvet stuffed in there. Maybe a couple of pots and pans. My grandfather became a butcher. Did they bring some knives along with them? They also brought with them the sampler my grandmother embroidered when she was 12. (It hangs in my bedroom.) And a poster with the picture of all the young men, tot und lebendig, from the town of Neue Banat who'd fought on the losing side in der weltkrieg. The dead are in one section, the living (including Jacob Wolf) are grouped in another.
I never questioned why and how the emigration trunk ended up in my family's basement, but I'm guessing it accompanied my parents when they moved, just after World War II, from Chicago, where my mother grew up, to my father's hometown of Worcester. (They met when my father was stationed at Chicago's Navy Pier. They married in November 1945, and came to Worcester in March 1946 when my father was discharged after four years in the Navy.)
What was in that trunk? My mother's clothing, including her wedding dress and her mouton fur coat. My father's Navy uniforms, frugally saved for later use. My father wore the khakis to do yard work; my mother cut down the dress whites and blues to make clothing for me and my sister Kathleen. One Easter, we wore Navy blue coats, lined with a spritely red taffeta with white polka dots, that she'd made for us.
All of the contents of my mother's hope chest - including pillow cases my grandmother had embroidered for her, and some tea towels may mother had embroidered for herself (tea towels? what was she thinking?) - were in that trunk. Her engagement and wedding presents would have been in that trunk, too, but this was back in the day when an engagement present was a dishtowel, and a wedding present was a serving fork. So the gifts wouldn't have taken up all that much room.
One of her friends painted two sweet New England-scene water colors for my parents as a wedding gift. They were no doubt in that trunk. They're now in my bedroom.
What else was in the trunk? My mother's year book from Alvernia High School - I have it in my living room - and her scrapbooks, including one dedicated to Nelson Eddy, which we as kids managed to destroy. We did find a picture of Shirley Temple on one of the pictures of Nelson Eddy, which we liked a lot better than the prissy and effete Nelson Eddy.
Lots of family pictures. My grandparents were picture-takers supreme, and one of our favorite family activities was, once or twice a year, taking out the carton of old black and whites photos from the thirties and forties and trying to figure who was in them.
Watching the refugees flee Ukraine, I've been thinking about that big old trunk. It was a trunk that my grandparents, who didn't have all that much, had plenty of time to pack. They weren't fleeing, they were emigrating. That's why I have my grandmother's sampler hanging on my wall.
My mother had time, too, to pack up her things for the move to Worcester. That's why I have those charming little water colors, and the Alvernia High Class of 1937 yearbook.
The Ukrainians are fleeing with next to nothing (other than their kids and their lives). A backpack or roller bag stuffed with essentials. Some of them just have a small carrier bag, or a plastic bag from the grocery store. Some have nothing. Don't look back. The place you lived, and everything you ever owned, may have already been bombed to smithereens by the Russians. Or it may be in the sites of Russian artillery any day now.
What do you grab when you've got to grab it quick and stuff it in a backpack? Your smartphone charger. A change of clothing. Your baby's ear medicine. Maybe a picture, a small memento or two.
Your life is at stake. Your kids' life.
Stuff doesn't matter. Lives do. And for most of the recipe, the lives they are fleeing with mean that they're leaving not just home behind, but family. Men between the ages of 16 and 60 aren't allowed to leave. They have to stay and fight. So the women and children, the elderly, who are making their way to safety are leaving behind husbands, sons, fathers, brothers, uncles, friends. Imagine kissing your husband, son, father, brother, uncle, friend goodbye, knowing you may never see him again. Knowing that life for you and your children may well go on without the love, caring, support and companionship of these men in their lives. In your lives.
The refugees have lost their homes, their jobs, their communities, their churches, their clubs. The shops they stopped in each day. Their favorite restaurant, the corner bar. All that is familiar. Their day to day.
Immigrants like my Irish great grandparents and German grandparents make the deliberate decision - whatever duress they were under to make that decision - to leave all this behind and start anew. They left knowing that, if the ever went back to visit - which most of my antecedents didn't - the old hearth and home would still be there. Refugees have no such choice, and if and when they go back it may be to nothing.
Beyond terrible.
Given all this, stuff doesn't matter. And yet it does.
What do you take with you? Probably not the sampler your grandmother embroidered when she was 12, or the Alvernia High School Class of 1937 yearbook.
My heart aches for those Ukrainian refugees.
Maybe things will turn out okay. Maybe they have already. (I'm writing this on March 7th. Here's hoping.) Maybe someone will toss Putin over and the generals will withdraw. Maybe afterwards there'll be a 21st century Marshall Plan to rebuild the cities and towns that the Russians are so insanely and mercilessly destroying. Maybe people will be able to go home again. Or, like my non-refugee family, Irish and German, forge new lives for themselves elsewhere.
But something will be missing. Sure, it's only stuff. Just one more thing to be sad about during this incredibly scary and sad time.
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On my way to the rally on the Boston Common, I walked through the Public Garden, where I saw that someone had made a little Ukraine-themed sweater for one of the Make Way for Ducklings statues. That made me smile.
While I was walking, I heard the bells from the Arlington Street Church chiming out Mussorgsky's "Great Gate of Kiev (Kyiv)". That made me tear up.
There were a lot of people at the rally. That made me proud.
Slava Ukraini.
1 comment:
Perfectly written.
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