Franciszka

    This is a story of a young woman, Franciszka, who came as a Polish immigrant to begin a new life in American.  Events start with her story as a reflection, a family mystery, and tragedy which encompassed over 30 plus years.  Now, after a hundred years, I believe this story mirrors what many families and immigrants faced in a 1920's society, as might face today.   A family has split apart with a mother and her children suffering a tremendous personal loss.  It is a journey of ups and downs that will ring just as true to the politics and pandemic evident we saw during the beginnings of 2020. I offer a story of my grandmother, in her person, with words she would need us to hear.  

     The hardships and horrors that immigrant women faced in the early 1900s are hard to imagine and rarely fully understood today.  A family in crisis would expect charity services to step in to help release a working person from the burden of the family and to be able to recover from injuries and then seek work.  What was once an everyday life would be gone, and no one might ask if wife and mother are OK.   A question, "where are my children"?  might receive no answers.  Depression and gray days seemingly never end.  The community believes this situation contributes to developing mental illness and requires care for self by others.

    We explore hidden stories and look at the journeys which took a family into a new world.   Each of Franciszka's children has now passed, and they could offer more accounts, but this reading is my grandmother's time of memories.