Middle East Mom

Grandma, I’m Sorry!

In the early 1990’s, when our family immigrated to Israel, it dawned on me that I had spent my entire life, both up to that point, and since then, living in what I would call ‘immigrant countries’.  Countries where welcoming immigrants was an important aspect of the founding of the country.

I began to think about the effect on me and my children about growing up in an ‘immigrant atmosphere’.  While they were all born in Israel, our household was and is an immigrant household.  Also, when you add the fact that my maternal grandparents came from Poland and Byelorussia with my mom growing up in Hamtramck, Michigan speaking only Polish at home and my paternal grandparents being French Canadian and my father himself was a Canadian who immigrated to the states to marry my mother.  Then, adding another layer to this:  the fact that I have spent most of the last 25+ years living as an immigrant myself in Israel.  I think I am qualified, at least at some level, to speak on the topic.

The first thing all of this ‘immigration’ activity has done in my life is to give me some level of gentleness  to people who are not just like me.  Who or what would I or my parents and grandparents have become if they had chosen a different country to immigrate to?  Or if their choices were restricted by their first choice of countries’ immigration quotas and I grew up in Slovenia?

It has also given me great compassion for people who are not wired to learn another language so easily.  While I never met my maternal grandmother, Wladislava Podsiadly, (pronounced Vlad-es-slava Po-chod-wee), the stories about her lack of English have lived far beyond her death.  In a time when there was an expression of ‘Jump back, Jack’, meaning back off, she would firmly tell a shopkeeper who she thought perhaps was cheating her (maybe he really was), ‘Take-a-three-steps’.   I laughed at this cute little story, and others, about Grandma Vlad-es-Slava for years until . . . I became an immigrant myself.

There are times I’ll be shopping at the grocery store here in Israel, and spot some new immigrants.  Not hard to do . . . my kids have grown up and have become expert racial profilers as we tried to ‘pick the country of origin’ of the 80,000,000,000 tour groups that visit Israel in addition to the large variety of immigrants.  At the store, many of these immigrants will, for example, pick up 2 different cans of vegetables and quizically stare at them both  I know they are wondering ‘gee, did my friend say to buy the green or the blue can’.  Because they can’t read Hebrew yet.  Does the green can have the beans with no tomato sauce in it, or is it the blue can??  There is a whole ritual of turning the can over, slowly, in their hands, looking for some word of their mother tongue.  Many times, I find this wave of emotion hit me, and I want to walk up to one of these women, give them a giant hug, and without letting go, scream out loud ‘Grandma, I’m Sorry!’  Somehow as to make amends for all of my privileged, American brattiness from my adolescence which existed, until that fateful day I became a Vlad-es-Slava myself.

Then there was my Uncle Ludwig, who, through an unfortunate industrial accident, had lost the top joint of his right index finger.  So when he wanted to point at you and tell you to stop doing the annoying thing you were doing, he would fold his index finger down, and point with his middle finger, and say ‘you shee dish’?  Yes, Uncle Ludwig, I did see this, and we would leave the room, laughing uncontrollably that our dear Uncle had inadvertently flipped his nephews and nieces the bird, yet again.

So here it is . . .  to my Grandma and Grandpa Podsiadly, Uncle Ludwig, and all of the rest of the Eastern Europeans in my life, retroactively, . . . I am sorry!!!   I wish I hadn’t been so hard on you all.  You were incredibly strong people with amazing resolve and tenacity.  Much of the strength that helped me survive and eventually thrive as an immigrant myself, came from you.

So the next time you are shopping, and you see someone turning a can of beans over and over again in their hand in a decidedly undecisive manner, offer them a smile and some help.  🙂

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