Sadie

You crossed the Atlantic in 1914 during WW I. You and the four-year-old boy who would become my father. The ship docked and your eyes searched the pier, looking for the husband who came to New York a couple of years before and whom you barely know. The ship was overbooked— passengers fleeing history— of pogroms, of Czars, of revolution, of war.

Europe was on the ship and America on the dock.

You were illiterate in English, Russian or Yiddish. What if he wasn’t there? Where would you go? You would make your way.

You held the hand of the child, protecting him from being swept off the ship into America, lost like Joseph.

The crowds filled the spaces, rushed the gangplank and you could not see. You could not see the future: the three more sons who would be born Americans and the loss of one to childhood diphtheria, Joseph’s sudden death in the heat in a subway car, your post WW II trip across the country instead of the ocean this time, nor your Californian life and the trips to Vegas with your second “husband” Sam. You played the cards you were dealt.

You couldn’t understand the language, but you understood life.  You found a way to live with a spirit and a joy. Grandmother of light as seen in your pictures and the handful of visits.