Explorations

These are the near famous words my great grandmother passed onto my grandmama, who in turn passed them onto my mom. My great grandmother mind you is a woman who survived both the Holocaust and raised six children alone during the Great Depression; she experienced a great deal of hardship. However, my great grandmother never complained about hard life was for a Russian immigrant during these times. She struggled to take care of her children in the face of great adversity; in not only economic terms, but barriers presented by language and cultural as well. It was her demand that the children(my grandmama and her siblings) spoke English. No matter how bad things became for the family, knowing English could save them.

I think about this today while riding the subway in New York City. “You can never get lost as long as you know English”. The words run through my mind akin to the pace of the express train we took…on an impromptu trip to Harlem. Yes, we got lost. It was fantastic. We had planned and plotted everything out, and somehow due to construction the local train turned into an express train the stop before the one we had intended to take. So what?

For starters, we(and by we I mean Mary, Karen, Reggie, Donna and myself) got off the train and walked up to the street. After a gander and a healthy laugh at our shared folly we walked back down into the subway. Thankfully we had already purchased our passes and we got back into the subway with ease. After a few moments with a subway map, and a stranger’s advice we ended up back on the train, and within 20 or so minutes had reached our destination: Central Park.

Being lost was a really useful experience. I couldn’t help but think of my great grandmother, and that perhaps I experienced a fraction, a very small fraction of the plight of trying to make it in a world you don’t totally understand. An accidental trip to Harlem and my great grandmother–funny how things peice themselves together. More later-off to the MOMA