Some years ago on my first trip to New York, I felt compelled to find my mother’s footsteps. She had left Hungary, sailed to America and entered Ellis Island in 1908 at 16.
I wanted to see where she had lived, where she had shopped and maybe where she had worked. I took a bus to the Lower East Side. I walked along Orchard Street and Avenue A and I couldn’t find her imprint anywhere.
She had told me about the bedlam of sounds that surrounded her, the street peddlers who sold sandwiches and pickles, the sewing factories where she worked.
She told me about the cold-water flat where she lived with her sister.
I have visions of my small mother, a shawl draped across her shoulders walking briskly through snow-covered streets to the hall where other young immigrants met to dance on Saturday nights.
When she left New York for a small Texas city, she told me she could again breathe fresh air, have a garden of flowers and vegetables, and hear the sound of quiet nights. I realized why I could not find my mother’s footprints in New York. She had taken them with her and placed them carefully in Texas. New York was never her home. It was just a transfer point.
I made that transition myself, leaving Texas where I was born. Now San Francisco is where I belong. I look out over the city at night and quietly rejoice that I, too, have come home.