I was thinking about my Grandma Figlar’s trunk not long ago when I visited Ellis Island (my third visit) and saw all of the baggage in the exhibit hall when you first walk in.  I wondered how she managed to carry this trunk with her all that way from Slovakia in 1922–in it all of her wordly possessions.  I also thought about how I travel today and everything I think I “need” but how she got by with just this trunk.  

I discovered this trunk in the coal cellar of my parents home many years ago.  There were all sorts of other items piled on top of it.  Inside the trunk was my mother’s wedding dress–curled up into a ball in a plastic bag.  At the time my mother was still alive so I asked her about the dress.  She told me it was her wedding gown and that at one time had tried to wash it but when she did it shrank and she had thought she ruined it but could not throw it away.  So, she rolled it up and stuffed it in the trunk!  I have since had the garment professionally cleaned and stored away so that I can preserve it.  And I still have the trunk too.  These items are links to these two very special women in my life.

The photo was cropped during the process of preparing a combined image that eventually was used on the back cover of my book, Three Slovak Women.

 

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