In the summer of 1876, a woman named Frantiska embarked on a journey. She left Caslav, Czechoslovakia on a steamship called the Rhein. She was accompanied by her husband, parents, and a three month old son. Sailing to America reportedly took ten to fifteen days. The traveling party arrived at what was then Castle Garden in New York City on July 4th, 1876. New York was celebrating the Centennial. 29 year old Frantiska was reported to have believed that due to the celebratory shouting, shooting, and general mayhem, the end of the world was upon her. Frantiska and her party traveled by train to Fremont, Nebraska and were met by relatives who drove them by horse and wagon to Weston, Nebraska. All told, Frantiska had traveled nearly 5,000 miles.
Frantiska's grandson became my grandfather.
Those are the things that I know.
The things that I don't know are heavy on my mind lately.
I don't know what prompted Frantiska to make a decision to change her life so drastically. It could have been economic. It may have been political. It's possible it had something to do with religious reasons.
I don't know if Frantiska complained. I don't know if she was thrilled to welcome life anew and tossed herself fully into her new circumstances.
Whatever her motivation, Frantiska found herself living in a dugout home on a an unforgiving prairie where she faced a language barrier, little water, blazing summers, blizzards and prairie fires.
When I think about her, I am forced to compare the two of us. Around the same age as she was when she embarked on her journey to the States, I moved my family 300 miles west of where I grew up. I nearly came unhinged. Frantiska traveled almost 5,000 miles with an infant. When my kids were little I didn't even want to take them to the grocery store. Frantiska raised children in a dugout house, and later a sod dwelling. I can't sleep without my ceiling fan on high and the proper arrangement of pillows.
Frantiska and I? We are so different. And yet....I am of her.
I don't know whether Frantiska was a democrat or a republican. I know she wasn't granted the right to vote for herself for another forty-four years after she arrived in Nebraska, which would have made her around 73 years old. I know she died at 76 or 77 years old, so I don't know if she voted at all. I don't know if Frantiska leaned to the left, or if she was a conservative woman. I don't know what Frantiska believed about the state of the world in her time.
But I know this: Frantiska wasn't from here.
Frantiska's grandson defended his country in World War II. Her grandson's grandsons have spent years in America's military.
The choices Frantiska made that led her to land in rural Nebraska led to a soft, spoiled lady, living in rural Nebraska. I don't know if she would be proud of her legacy, but I know that I am proud to be hers. Somewhere in my DNA, bravery, boldness, audacity and grit live. Deep down, in the marrow of my bones, lives the kind of strength that I simply can not imagine. But it's there, and I think I could mine it if I needed it. And I gave it to my children. And I share it with my brother. And on bad days, when I read the news and hear the horror that lives in our world? I think about Frantiska.
Frantiska was welcomed to the United States, her new country, by a poem, The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.
From her beacon hand glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempts tost to me. I lift my flame beside the golden door!"
The poem tells us that, at some point, the masses were welcome here. That immigrants should be welcome to America's promise of opportunities and freedom. As my great, great grandmother was welcomed. Incidentally, or perhaps not, the poem was written by a woman of Jewish heritage inspired by her experiences working with refugees and the plight of immigrants. The plight, perhaps, of a 29 year old woman and her three month old baby who had traveled over four thousand miles and still had another thousand miles to go? The plight of people who were brave, and bold, and audacious enough to leave whatever was behind them for the promise of something better. And maybe 'better' meant surviving fires and blizzards and arid, scorching temperatures but that also means that whatever they left behind was worth the risk.
Almost 150 years after Frantiska arrived in New York, I find myself disillusioned at the world around me. Exiled by a sea of red. Living in a world that tries to tell the granddaughter of a World War II veteran that she did not see what she knows she saw. Alive in a time where being "other" is terrifying. I'm trying to figure out how to live in today's world. I'm grasping at straws and praying and hoping. I'm asking my great, great, grandmother to send along some of her grit and strength and bravery and boldness and audacity down the ancestral pipeline.
Like Frantiska, on the Fourth of July in 1876, I look around me and I listen and I am frightened that the world may be ending. But, unlike Frantiska, I know some of what is coming after me. The children of the grandchildren of the grandchildren. And I am comforted to know that they will do better. Yes, they have anxiety and we maybe coddled them a little, but they recognize that "other" is beautiful and right. They have the ability to see more. And if generational trauma is a thing, then so is generational badassery. So, I have faith. Faith in us, the great great grandchildren of the people who were. Faith that even though it seems like such dark times, Frantiska laid the groundwork for us to follow her, because she followed the beacon and by all accounts, she did okay.
So, here's to Frantiska. And to those of us who came after. May we be bold, and gritty and strong and brave, so that our great, great grandchildren will write about us someday from the safety of a world that looks vastly different from today.
