So, Happy Independence Day to all!
Between 1927 and 1929 my grandparents fled poverty in Germany after living through the horror of World War one, which included one grandfather losing all his brothers in France, and my other grandmother being left an orphan reduced to scrubbing floors to survive as a 12 year old.
They came to the US with a one-way ticket and the promise of a better life. They had to work, but they found it. In actual fact they never rose very far above what we might consider poverty today, but eventually they owned a house (one that housed 3 families most of the time) and always had to share the things they had to make ends meet. At one point my grandparents lived in a house made from sod cuttings in North Dakota.
It was that promise of a better life for their kids that drove them on. My father's father died young from the years of painting other people's houses with lead-based paint. My uncles all died or were injured fighting for their new country in Europe or the Pacific. I don't think I ever heard them complain- it was the reward of seeing my father and his sister succeed; scholarships to university, having middle class jobs, raising their children in clean housing, escaping the horror of war.
I'm sure they did have their own heartbreak- they never saw the friends and relatives that they left behind again.
But they did send what little they had back to those in need. They sent tickets for passage to brothers and sisters, let them sleep on the sofa while they got started. And, in my fathers-fathers case, returning for a visit in the early 1930's and reading the handwriting on the wall with National Socialism and refusing to be part- returning instead to work on the other side and bear arms against the country of his birth to fight for what was right.
By my fathers account, it was a happy life, hard but meaningful. They were all working together towards a better lot in life.
So here's an offer of grateful thanks to those brave enough to leave everything behind, to make a better life for their familes. Of being unafraid of hard work and hunger, of lonelieness and want to reach a goal.
And here's to our new home that made all of this possible.
Today I'm not going to a flag waving parade. There won't be any celebrations like that in Europe today. Instead, I'll pray for all our safety in a crazy world, that that others will find the freedom and safe haven that my family found 80 years ago. And to the first thing they saw at Ellis Island.....
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!"” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus
