Where Their Feet Landed

engelberg, switzerland

This essay is published in InkHouse’s book “Hindsight 2020” available for download here: http://blog.inkhouse.com/hindsight-2020-the-inkhouse-book-of-essays-debut

Begin. I wanted to have a profound moment in the mountains. The symbolism was there — bearing structures standing for eons, rising from the ground, constantly braving the winds of winter and the soft caressing of the snow, slowly building under the weight of itself. Knowing that each of the places we visited that week would unveil a different significance. The home my grandfather was raised in, placed across the German border. The house my grandmother was raised in, the one in the picture at the top of the stairs of her home in New York, my brothers and I always chasing each other past it, rarely taking notice. Here, we would drive the mountain passes, stay with a friend, walk to the edge of Lake Zurich, take the ski lift to the top of the snowcapped mountains. Packing journals and books to keep me up at night, weighing the significance of each place, wanting this journey to change me, hoping I could learn something about the way I loved, breathed, and became.

— -

When searching for meaning, ancient civilizations looked to the skies — searching the stars, sometimes without knowing what those fading, pulsing lights in the distance were. Tracing the faces of men and beasts into the black light, projecting thoughts and dreams onto the shapes they drew. In the Swiss countryside, the flickering lights come from the houses on the hills — no room for cars to pass on the streets. In the black of night, the stars are clearer than they are back home, piercing through the fabric of the sky. It was Ptolemy who first used a mathematical model that placed Earth at the center of the universe. Nicolaus Copernicus disagreed and placed the sun there instead. Soon after, Galileo turned his telescope to the sky to observe what to many were holes in the celestial fabric.

the church in schmitten, Switzerland

— -

According to Ellis Island’s official records. my grandmother Erika Heer sailed into port on the ship Liberté in 1953. She was twenty-one years old, coming from France by way of Switzerland. The ship’s manifest stated that it left the harbor in France on October 10 and arrived in New York on November 5. Tirelessly, the waves beat against the boat, swaying it in the night. Erika’s journey, illuminated and guided by the stars above, the land behind, the shadows approaching. Looking upon the same night sky, the same moon, that hangs overhead when I look up.

— -

People say I look like my mother: soft eyes, roundness in the face, brown hair falling below the shoulders. She looks like her sisters: alike in features, photographed in bowl cuts, matching dresses sewn from fabric scraps, anything saved when the week’s work had ended. During late-night talks, my mom joked that her boys held fears of becoming their father — stuck in his ways and time — adamant about not following his suit-and-tie dance. Watching where their feet landed, careful not to repeat it. My fears tangoed in reverse: worrying that I would never become my mother, intelligent, determined, never echo the same steps as my grandmother — leaps, bounds across the floor.

— -

I know I held on to that photograph of her for too long, because I couldn’t make out what my mom was saying to me. The cacophony of voices echoed in the mountains around us, filling up the sky with rings of laughter. Sitting at my great-aunt’s house with my family around me, conversations mixing English and Swiss-German, short breaths taken in between sentences. The photographs that were passed around, black-and-white markings of the passages of years, the faces stoic and solid in their gazes. The schoolhouse remained, prominent in the background, but the faces changed. Flipping through the photos, watching my grandmother age before my eyes, slowly, into the young woman who would leave all of this behind.

me & my grandmother in Davos, Switzerland

Zoning back in, I looked up at the faces around me. Eyes I saw myself in, laughter that echoed my own. Realizing at this moment how much my grandmother gave away: time with her family, the mountains in the distance, the opportunity to grow into something familiar. She would have been a seamstress or a farmer, working the land tirelessly, would have tended to her brothers and sisters. Almost as if I left the moment, I realized everything that was at stake, everything it cost her to move into the unknown, every string of her life in front of her, dangling, unwoven.

The face I wear today was formed not by me but by the generations of those before — the hands that climbed mountains, delivered milk, made wedding dresses. The sacrifices my family made form in my face the fault lines that mirror those of the mountains, sometimes echoing the coldness of the snow at the top, the mystery where the edges graze the sky.

— -

On a micro level, my grandmother left her village in the valley, houses meeting at the bottom of the mountain — a space so small you’d miss it if you weren’t looking diligently — so that I could write these words. On a macro level, she was a twenty-one-year-old looking for an opportunity, life in a new country, and a way to send money back to support her family after the early passing of her father. What would it take to leave? Ten brothers and sisters at home; responsibility as the oldest child; searching for a new life, spoken in a new language. As much as my story today is my story, it is hers too. Each decision she made as a young woman wove the fabric of my life, of my mother’s life. The pieces she left behind soon became the cement choices that solidified the path forward.

— -

We returned to the car to drive one-lane roads back to the flat, wondering how many paths we take to land us back where it all started: with the young girl in the mountains setting off to a new country for a better tomorrow — for herself and all those who would come after her — knowing that she had left so that we could be everything, anything. What would it take to leave? beat in my heart, at the same pulse — What would it take to return? Who will you be when you get there?…and then the thought Anything.

— -

in a different life

in a different life, I dragged paintbrushes across

the striking white, watched pictures unveil themselves, whispering secrets to

the wind, catching colors in the paint seeping through

-

in a different life, I danced between the

light of the moon, fabrics weaving themselves through my

legs and binding my toes to the

ground with the heels rooting upwards. a

body light, settling in the dust

-

in a different life, my hand cuts on the jagged rock, heaving my

body towards the peak, legs catching underneath to support

it. generations of men etched into the same mountains, snow collected on the

noses of their stone faces, converged with

wind and water.

-

i have lived a thousand times and will live a

thousand more, dancing through the days, open chest and

bare face, teasing the morning clock, kept awake by

the things I am not and

may never have been.