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from The Century That
Was
from Immigrants All
by Eve Bunting
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 My heart was breaking. “I don’t
want to go,” I whispered. And right at that moment, I didn’t want to go. My husband, my three small children, and I were boarding a plane in Ireland to start a new life in California, USA.
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immigrants clearing customs |
The decision to leave had been  wrenching.
It has been said that the urge to emigrate is born out of either
“push” or “pull.” “Push,” because for some
reason—economic or political perhaps—you need to go. “Pull”
because you have relatives already in the far country, and the tug is
strong to go where they are, where the grass is greener and the sun shines
brighter. Whichever way and for whatever reason, it is never very easy. For us,
the push was to make a better future for ourselves and our children. . . .
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We
came on a DC-6B, a comparatively small plane, because back then there
were no passenger jets flying. . . . Our journey took twenty-two hours,
over the polar ice cap. We landed to refuel in the Arctic, and all of
it seemed like a dream, and not a happy one. I tried not to think of the
grandparents left behind, waving as our plane lifted. Crying.
Oh, it was hard.
It is always hard.
In 1831, Rebecca Burlend, coming to
America with her family to farm, wrote about her thoughts:
It was at Liverpool . . . that the throes of
leaving England and all its
endearments put our courage to a test. . . . We sat in
profound
silence
for an hour together. Only now and then a sigh would escape
us. . . . I
not unfrequently observed [my dear husband’s] eyes
suffused with
tears, which though unnoticed by him, fell . . . down his sunbrowned
cheeks. . . . “O Rebecca, I cannot do it, I cannot do it!” |
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But they
did it, as so many before them had done and as so many after them would
do. I hope Rebecca and her “dear husband” found fulfillment. . . .
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From "Immigrants All" by Eve Bunting from The Century That Was: Reflections on the Last One Hundred Years, edited by James Cross Giblin. Copyright © 2000 by Eve Bunting. Reprinted by permission of the author.
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