I want to ask her, this grandmother, my Baba, this young but not so young woman, this spinster, this housekeeper to the local village priest.

I want to ask her—were you afraid? Or, were you hopeful?

What did it feel like to leave behind your small village, bucolic rhythms played out over centuries? Did you go to the bees to tell then of your plans? whisper words of consolation, taste the honey one last time, the flavour of clover sweet on your tongue? Did you walk the woods in thankfulness, caress the trees, bend deep for a few mushrooms to make one last soup? 

Did you gather the barn yard fowl round you, scatter grain as you clucked to chickens, ducks and geese? Did you imagine a new flock in a far-off land? Were you worried about what that would look like—muskeg and small woods? Or, were you reassured by the priest’s words? This was a successful man who had made the leap to the New Country almost fifteen years ago—a hard-working man with a well-kept farm and a large family. A man who needed you more than anyone ever had—grown sons, daughters already married and the two youngest orphaned at the death of his first wife in childbirth.

This was a partnership he offered, a chance unlike any other. Was the prospect of a home and land, a place to make an imprint, enticing? What did it fell like to arrive to a well-built, sturdy wooden house knowing that the first years in this country meant sod houses and harnessing children to plows for want of oxen?

Did you draw the pail from the well and drink deep of this water, feel the minerals on your tongue? Did you count the cows in the barn, inhale the perfume of straw and warm bodies, stroke a flank before setting down the milking stool and pail?

Did you bring seeds from home and plant them by the front door to remind you of family you left behind?

Did you remember the words you whispered to women in labour as you struggled through childbirth?

Did you walk the woods and cry out in joy at mushrooms you recognized, the tiny sweet strawberries of spring?

What was it like to make a hundred pierogi a day, only to have them gobbled up at meals—to start all over the next day and the next?

Did you give thanks as you saved used thread from a garment, cut off buttons and fashioned a dress from flour sacks?

You had lived through Revolution and a Great War—was this heaven on earth for you here?

Lying in bed at night, warm against the solid back of a solid man, a man who loved you, who provided for you, a man who sat down to write a letter, a letter that changed your life.