I spent most of Tuesday and Wednesday waiting to hear from my family and friends in New York. By Wednesday night, most were accounted for and safe. Since then, I've just been telling myself that the few people I still haven't heard from are fine to keep myself calm. That, and avoiding the up-to-the-minute news reports. Yep, still no twin towers.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who needs a mental reprieve from the grief and shock of the past week's events.
So for today, I will forgo pedantic advice and politics. Instead, I'm just going to tell a story. It is a story of adventure, love and a very big basket.
My grandfather on my dad's side, Paul, was born in Poland. As you may have guessed, Poland wasn't a terribly good place to be a Jew in the early 1900s. One day, a police officer decided to steal Paul's bicycle. Apparently the officer thought he was perfectly within his rights and didn't expect any protest. My granddad, however, had different ideas.
He refused to give up his bike and had to beat the officer up to keep it. After that, it was kind of a bad idea for him to stick around the country. So, he followed the path so many other Eastern European and Russian Jews took - not to the United States or Palestine, but to indentured servitude in Argentina.
There he labored for several years while trying to save money to get into the States. The effort was prolonged by his smoking habit, which diverted a good part of his pay into the company store. But, finally, he made it.
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Meanwhile, my grandmother, Ruth, made it here under less dire circumstances. Also from Poland, she managed to come directly to New York with an uncle. Once here, she worked and saved to bring as many members of her family over as she could. It was thanks to her efforts that at least some of my family escaped before the Holocaust.
Thus, it was that Ruth and Paul came to live in the same little town in Brooklyn. Yes, along with rickety roller coasters and great knishes, Coney Island was destined to give birth to my dad - but not just yet.
Though they lived in the same town, my grandparents might never have met each other if it weren't for one fateful accident - a Jewish singles' cruise up the Hudson.
The cruise led up to a picnic at Bear Mountain. The idea was that only women would bring food, so the men had to hit on women to get lunch. Paul had a brilliant idea. He decided to flirt with the woman with the largest basket. That woman was none other than my grandmother.
The ploy worked. They hit it off, and when the boat arrived, they sat down to eat together. Paul waited with hungry anticipation as Ruth opened the basket and pulled out . a sandwich. That's it. Just one sandwich. As it turned out, she had brought the big basket because it was the only one she had.
Fortunately, Paul managed to control both his hunger and his disappointment, and he married her anyway.
So here I am.
by Sari Krosinsky
Daily Lobo Columnist
