From I To We

This is the story of this immigrant child who grew up in New York City and how she became the woman she is today. - - Donna Poisl

by Aleksandra Polonetskaya, she emigrated from Odessa, Ukraine to New York in 1997

My first memory of New York City was sitting in the backseat of my cousin’s car, listening to my parents yelling with excitement, but having no urge to join in because I felt like my bladder would burst with every bump on the road. My second most vivid memory is of myself sobbing, begging my mother to take me back to Odessa so that I could see my grandfather, demanding why we had to leave. It didn’t make sense to my seven year old self that I had to be ripped away from my beloved grandfather, from home, and from my friends, only to come and live in a three bedroom apartment that was shared by eight people.

I wondered about this for several years until my grandparents finally came to America. Then it didn’t matter that much anymore. Later on, in high school and college, I was introduced to characters and events such as Stalin, Hitler, the Holocaust, anti-semitism, things that I had heard about at home, things that people would make jokes about at the kitchen table then laugh with their mouths, while their eyes would stare blankly at a spot on the opposite wall. These things were mere concepts to me for so many years were now becoming real, and as a Russian Jew, whose history included all of these “concepts,” I recognized that I wasn’t quite connecting everything.
Click on the headline above to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.