Ellis Island

Imagine a cold September morning.  You are standing on the deck of a large ship, along with a few hundred fellow passengers.  The air around you is grey with an early morning light, threaded with a mist fine and mysterious that dusts your lips with a hint of salt from tiny, sweat like, beads of moisture.  There is a mix of passengers on deck, hands in pockets, stamping their feet to chase away the cold.  Each class of passengers is evidenced by the clothes they wear and, on a more subtle level, their tiers of residency on the ship.  From the upper decks come the upper class, wearing the fashions of the day as if they were born in them.  They mill about the deck in overcoats over tweed suits and satin dresses with polished leather pumps.  From the middle decks come the middle class, businessmen mostly, with pudgy wives on their arms cautiously making eye contact with the third group, as if both curious and horrified to be in such close proximity.  The crowds from steerage are recognizable for the shapeless similarity of the weatherbeaten clothing they wear in layers comprised of everything they own.   Perhaps you are one of these, mingled here in the fog, feeling the cold in your bones and the thrum of the ship’s engines through the rusty steel plating beneath your feet.

You are all here because the crewmen have told you that this will be your last day on ship, for the shores of your destination will become visible sometime shortly after daylight.  You have all picked yourselves from your beds, cots, or bundles, and made you way to the decks as if answering a siren’s call to fate.  You are waiting for something, something that you could only dream about in vague images, pieces of tales told by others in letters long faded, but etched into your memory as if carved into the flesh of your soul.  You have come to the deck to wait for the first glimpse of your future – apprehensive, fearful, but above all filled with a surging sense of hope that at last your future will be revealed in all its glory. Read the rest of this entry »