Immigration

My sister-in-law Pam posted a picture of me on FB from when I was about 24. It got me to thinking, especially about the look on my face.  Wonder what I was thinking. I would have been married about a year by then. 

I was working full time and taking Norwegian classes at night as my husband's Mom spoke mostly Norwegian having migrated to the US in her 50's. We were struggling to speak to each other. They left their remote farm in Norway to join an uncle in Williston, North Dakota. When my husband graduated high school they moved to Seattle. He and I met at the University of Washington when I was 19 and he was 21.

Their farm is located about 200 +- miles north of the Artic Circle. The snow we got in Walla Walla this year was nothing compared to the stuff the piled up to their second story windows in the winter. Each year they shoveled a tunnel to reach the critters in the barn. They did indeed ski to school. During WW2 their farm was occupied by German soldiers. His father was in the British Merchant Marine and outside Norway when it was occupied by Germany. That left my very young husband, his older sister, his mother and his grandfather running the farm.  It's located on a fjord opening into the sea.  Nearby is Hakoya Island outside Tromsø where the German battle ship Tirpitz (the sister ship to the Bismarck) was sunk by the RAF in November 1944. Young as he was he has some very vivid memories of those times. He remembers going to Tromsø I believe when his sister needed to have her tonsils out. It was done in the doctor's office. While the operation was ongoing he saw the office building next door knocked to the ground in an air raid.

My own grandfather and his brother came to this country to stay when they were around 12 and 14 from Great Britain. They were Scots who were born and lived in the east end of London.  The family were mostly displaced Highlanders who ended up around Edinburgh and then on to London. They were effectively orphaned at 4 and 6 when their mother died and their father left. They both ended up on ships as cabin boys and jumped ship twice in New York. The first time they were actually shanghaied onto other ships. How they survived as long as they did I don't know. The second time they were taken into foster care in NYC and later as young men took the train across the country to Washington State.  On that train ride he and his brother Tom met my paternal grandmother Laura and her cousin Lena who were leaving Iowa for Seattle.   Tom married Lena and Grandpa married my Grandmother. Grandma Laura was a Cushing, and always proud of being a cousin of Cardinal Richard Cushing. His family arrived in the 1840's but Grandma Laura's were here in the 1600's part of the fur and shipping trade. I doubt they knew each other.

Funny what starts a train of thought.  I am relieved that our judicial system has retracted *'s immigration ban. We are all immigrants.  Without immigrants I wouldn't exist or have my sons, my grandchildren, and my extended web of family and friends or you. My whole world is richer because of it.  Husband and I parted ways many years ago but have managed to remain civil and friends who can still hug each other on the rare occasions we see one another. Practicing peace and inclusion.