Pesye
there was a little girl, named Pesye, born in Kalerka, in the Ukraine. a town which no longer exists. her father was a tailor and a jew. she and her family and their livestock lived in a small home consisting of just a few rooms. at the time, she was the youngest of six.
when things would go wrong for the other locals, which was frequently, they would blame the jews. they would go through the beet fields to where the jewish homes were and throw beets through the windows and terrorize them. this girl and her family would hide when they heard them coming. they would take down their lamp, their one possession of note, and hide it in the rafters. one time, after one of these pogroms, the father Yonkel dropped the lamp and it shattered on the wood floor. that was when Yonkel decided that it was time to move to America.
Pesye and her mother and her brothers and sisters followed Yonkel out a year later, on a boat. Pesye was still very young and the journey, especially back then, was immense in scope and meaning. to distract her, her mother bought her a new hat. and setting out of the harbor, on the stern looking back at europe, a wind picked up Pesye's new hat and carried it out to sea.
today Pesye died. she was my great aunt. my father's father's older sister. i knew her as Betty. a woman who never complained. a woman who always found something to be happy about. she never married and we were as close to children and grandchildren that she ever had. she was well over ninety, but i will remember her as the girl who lost her hat and as the woman who saw the bright side of things.
she was an inspiration to me.
may her memory be a blessing.
