Journey from Poland by Chris Migliore

An excerpt from Journal of My Family, a recounting of how my ancestors immigrated to America from Lithuania.

Now the time had come to depart the old familiar and secure way, for a new unforeseen and uncertain way…

… For at the moment, they would get on a large steamer…

experiencing nothing they had ever experienced before.

They would take a journey of a lifetime…

probably riding in 3^rd class steerage, all the way across the wide, uneasy ocean…

and as third-class passengers, they didn’t often see the light of day for the entire voyage.

For a month, at least, they waited…

and waited…

…and waited

… waiting for a glimpse of their new world.

Not ever learning the fate of their next generation, the old generation staying in Poland would now be wishing and praying for better things for that next generation, their descendants, the ones going into a whole New World, so far so removed and apart from drudgeries of the poor, demoralized, howbeit secure life, their family had been enduring since childhood.

This would be the first of my family to live in the New World!

Pennsylvania

Now, here in America, they had torn themselves from their mothers and their fathers of the old world to start anew. Now they lived here, lovingly bringing with them hundreds of years of enriching traditions; they became new, immeasurable communities; they made use of each other’s special gifts; this was much befitting the place they would stand up in.

These persons were European and, like Italians, Polish, etc., special feelings go to the Lithuanians and their great state. These people relied heavily on each other to pull themselves through. They toiled, sweated. And they worried in a place they knew little about but wanted to come to call home. Entering and seeing countless mountains of trees, hills, and valleys, they would learn and, at that moment on, become familiar with for generations.

Here… It was like none other…

With its swirls of smoky mist, whirling gently above the enormous mountains, encasing some, but not others.

There it was, mile upon mile of foreign terrain, challenging their every move.

In this place, walls of green reaching way high up and even further downward, were all around. It was as long as it was wide.

It would forever be the…

The great state of Pennsylvania,

that the love and respect would so be blazoned in their hearts. It became so, in

their mind, and not just in the soul.

They were HOME.