“You look so American!” What an awkward welcome upon my return to Greece, my homeland. I was intensely attached to my birthplace and wanted to blend in and belong.
This season, we read in the Book of Numbers that the Israelites had embarked on demanding journeys for decades. So, too, we modern day immigrants have journeyed from the known to the unknown and from the past into the future.
Upon returning to my homeland, I had to face both the sorrow and joy of memory. I lived a happy childhood but left my beloved home when I was only six years old. Being a youngster didn’t matter because deep rooted impressions of home traveled with me. Sure, I needed reminders like snapshots of my family and me wearing travel clothes. They were woolen. A ship crossing the North Atlantic Ocean in March required a warm snug hat, long heavy coat and matching pants. With gloomy skies of heavy clouds, the roiling waves made for a dark forbidding crossing.
To begin back home, something noteworthy happened. My parents took in a family of renters. Though the small house was crowded, both benefited. My parents collected rent, and the family had a place to live in what remained of a war broken country.
The mother and father, with two young sons, became an extended family of dear ones for me. They embraced me as one of their own. The white-hot sun, verdant grass pulsing with flowers of upturned faces, and picnic food of farm fresh vegetables and phyllo turnovers completed the much-loved outings. I was their guest, too, at celebrations of weddings and birthdays, and even infants’ baptisms. Even taking a child on visits to cemetery graves, surprisingly, were not out of bounds. These are childhood memories of a good life. A life so good that nothing else mattered, or so it seemed.
Suddenly, I watched my parents packing suitcases and eventually selling the house without explaining anything to me. They had decided to flee Europe by turning toward the West, to America. For me, it was the saddest of times.
There is no leaving a beloved life without sorrow. We immigrants, by necessity, leave those loved ones who had made life whole for us. The separation from family hurts deeply, be they close or distant relatives, or in our special circumstance, dear friends. Returning to Greece recently, I was reminded of my treasured girlhood adventures and experienced the heartaches of separation and loss.
Mine is but one example of an immigrant's life; one etched with sorrow at having to leave a place called home. A home filled with love and cherished moments. Moments that can only be remembered but never relived. Difficult as it was for my parents, they had decided to leave, filled with hope, for a fresh start in a new land.
I am happy for you, if your relatives were the immigrants in your family. You see, you are the beneficiary of the long-ago trauma of some family member leaving home to start anew in an unknown place with an unknown future. Fresh starts, but with longing for a life that had vanished forever.
I trust you are making the most of your own life by loving this country and always acting to protect its freedoms.
Mary M. Greenberg, Ph.D., serves on the State of Kansas Holocaust Commission. Her speaking engagements on preventing antisemitism are based on her research that advances the study of the Jewish people in the Diaspora. She is dedicated, also, to writing about how a Jewish perspective enriches our contemporary lives.