Offering Obamacare in 150 languages is absurd. If someone can’t speak enough English to fill in forms, what will they explain to a doctor?
– Dana Perino, Fox News Contributor, via Twitter, October 1, 2013
We lose so many details of those from whom we came. What I know of my grandmother comes from dim and faulty memory combined with distant family lore. She died before I was ten.
I know Marie came from the Ukraine as a young woman. I have a sense that it was around the time of World War I. It was called the Great War then, in a time before we knew we had to number them. She was fleeing a forced marriage.
She arrived in New York City without much knowledge of America’s customs and laws. She spoke no English. She must have found others who spoke her language. She somehow got word that the man to whom she had been promised had come looking for her.
She avoided the authorities. She had no way of knowing whether they would hand her to the man who felt he owned her, the one to whom she had been promised. And people in her part of Europe carried a long tradition, one that came from generations of unfortunate experience. Survival dictated staying away from police.
I remember a story. I believe it is accurate, as far as I can take it. I’m not sure whether it came from my own momma. The words have faded from my mind. I have an image of a young Marie, lost in the largest city on earth, bewildered by the labyrinth of streets, not knowing the language, afraid to talk with police who could be seen at every few intersections. She somehow found her way back without help.
After she was told she was being pursued by the man she did not love, she migrated out of New York, following the waterways, the Hudson River, then the Barge Canal, finally finding refuge in a small community outside of Syracuse. She met and married a fellow Ukrainian. They raised a family.
I know nearly nothing of my grandfather. He served in the Polish army. That is consistent with my understanding of history. Poland expanded and contracted over time in a sort of historical oscillation. He died when my mother was five.
Every once in a while, I will think of my grandmother. She was little more than a shadow in my memory for decades. I remember her from my childhood, when she lived with my parents. I remember my mother translating for her. For some reason, she comes to my mind more often, now that I have come to an age I once thought of as near elderly.
Every once in a while some remark or incident brings me to her. I thought of my grandmother as I read of the eugenic theories of Republican Steve King. He tells audiences America’s greatness comes from making life hard for immigrants, so only the strong make it to bear children. I suspect that, like her, many immigrants bring to our shores something Steve King will never know. It is not a stronger genetic disposition borne of a weeding out, but a brave tradition of adventure and an intolerance for oppression. My imagination tells me my grandmother would not care for Steve King.
The “English Only” folks who would limit benefits and rights, even restaurant service, to those who speak “American” remind me of Marie, who never could speak English. That is how Dana Perino brought her to my mind again.
We all know such anti-immigrant discussion does not really target my grandmother. It is an often darker, closer, Spanish speaking part of humanity that suffers the wrath of nativists. Were she alive now, she would be only collaterally injured by proposed policies aimed at others.
Dana Perino, who imagines that my grandmother could never have been treated by a doctor, was the Press Secretary to a President of the United States. Steve King, who believes America is strong because life was made harder for folks like young Marie, is a member of the United States House of Representatives.
Perhaps my reaction can be ascribed to simple ancestral pride. I don’t sense a pride that is tied to ancestry or restricted to family. But I have to believe the brave young woman who left her home and homeland, her friends and her family, everything she had ever known and loved, on a mad dash for freedom, deserves more admiration than most of those who live in comfort and judge those in other parts of the world as their natural inferiors.
Years after my grandmother died, my mother mentioned an incident that stayed with me. My parents were talking quietly about the day’s events, sharing their lives, while my mother’s mother listened, interested but without comprehending.
My dad left, I suppose on some errand. Marie spoke to her daughter in Ukrainian. Wondering if they been talking about her, she asked if she should move out.
My mom called to my dad and told him what her mother had just asked. My parents embraced my grandmother together, while my momma whispered reassurance and love.
We are taught to hate the sin and love the sinner, to hate the bite and not the biter. Still, it is not easy for me to be around those who speak of language differences as a natural barrier meant to keep people out, one more way God makes sure America stays the same.
The Marie I barely met and never knew proves otherwise.