My blog friend, Naomi over at Sitten' In The Hills, is welcoming in her 75th birthday on June 27 in a very unique way.  She's planning a virtual birthday party for all of us blog friends to attend.  It should be us that's giving her a gift.....but each day over the next couple weeks, she's giving a very special gift to her readers.  Photos and stories of her life and walking back in time with her.  I'm enjoying it immensely!  Why not pay her a visit and wish her a birthday wish?  After reading her blog yesterday, she triggered a memory of my Polish grandmother who came to Ellis Island at age 18 in 1908. 

I grew up hearing this story and all these years later it touches me even more.  My grandmother had one sister and four brothers.....one of which had already left Poland a few years earlier to immigrate to Salem, Massachusetts and begin a new life.  When my grandmother, Julia, turned 18 he sponsored her to join him.  She began her journey on the ship, Hamburgam out of Germany.  She must have been uncertain about actually leaving her family and homeland, because she kept questioning her mother if she should leave.  My great-grandmother encouraged her.  Things were bad in Poland, especially living in the rural area they did on a farm.  Food was scarce, there was no opportunity.  And all the while my great-grandmother gave reassurance, she never shed one tear.  Never.  Not even the morning that they drove my grandmother to the train station to begin her journey.  They kissed.  They hugged.  But my great-grandmother never cried. 

My grandmother boarded the train, found her seat and looked out the window to wave a final goodbye.  Still....her mother stood staunch, her face absent of tears.  The train began to pull away from the station and for some reason, a little way down the track, it stalled momentarily.  Just long enough for my grandmother to look out the window, back to her family standing there.  Her mother had crumpled to the ground, consumed with grief and tears, sobbing, while my great-grandfather held on to her, attempting to console her.  This was the final scene my grandmother had of her mother.  It was 1908 and she never returned to Poland.  

That montage has been seared in my mind since I was a child.  And as young as I was the first time I heard this story....I knew without a doubt, that what my great-grandmother did came under the supreme definition of "mother."  The elderly woman sitting in the above portrait is Marianna, my great-grandmother.  The young fellow is my grandmother's brother, with his wife and son.  Correspondence flowed back and forth between Salem, Mass. and that small village in Poland until shortly after WWII ended, when my great-grandmother passed away.  When my dad was there during the war, he made an attempt to visit and meet her....his grandmother.  But, unfortunately, he was turned back at the Polish border.

These are my roots and I treasure them.  So thanks, Naomi, for tweaking my memory and allowing me to briefly join the past with the present.  See you tomorrow.......