How Papa met Mama

    My niece and I were sitting close to the bed, where my older sister lay dying.  Her mind was intact. 
    “Now, listen, when you are cleaning the attic, remember to find and save Mama’s love letters.”
    We leaned closer.  “Up near the small window is a cardboard carton that looks like junk, covered with an old cloth.  In that carton you’ll find a package of letters, still tied in that faded pink ribbon.  Don’t throw them out!”
    Arlene, her daughter, my niece, said, “I’ll go up right now!”
    Quickly she was clambering down the creaky steps, announcing,  “I found them!”
    I always had known that Mama had a bundle of old letters tied in a ribbon that fitted into a certain hinged compartment of her bedroom bureau.  Even in those years when I was dusting the house, and opened and closed that wooden part, I never even thought of peeking into them. 
    This was the proper time to untie and read them. 
    This was the time my sister asked, “Do you know how Papa and Mama met?”  And I realized that somehow in all those growing up years and during all the grown up years, I had not known any details of how our parents met. 
    I had always known that my father at age 18 had been the first one in his family to leave the village in Russia near Kiev, and find a new life in America.  I had always known that he had a small grocery-feed shop in New Jersey, and by constant work and living with bare necessities, he had saved enough to bring over his entire family.  I had also always known that my mother, at the age of 15 had endured a turbulent month-long voyage from the Polish part of Russia to the United States with her mother and younger sister, coming to join her father, who had come earlier, and had established a place for them in Brooklyn.  
This is what my sister told us.
A young passenger named Beryl happened to befriend my mother’s little family of three females on their experience thrust together in steerage class on that ship.  They formed a friendly, helpful relationship, so by their arrival at Ellis Island, they exchanged contact addresses, hoping to reconnect sometime. 
It was about three years later that this Beryl appeared at my father’s store in New Jersey.  He and my father had been boys together in that same little village near Kiev!  By that time Beryl had found work and had time to hunt for his old “landsman”.  Great reunion! 
“So how come you’re not married yet?” asked Beryl.  “You speak good English.  You have this nice business; you’ve been in America several years already!”  
    “Married?  Who’s got time to get married?  I have been working all day every day to bring over my parents and my sisters and brother.  But, you know, maybe now I could begin to think about courting a girl.” 
    So Beryl said to my father, “Do I have a girl for you!  By this time she must be about 18 years old-beautiful black long hair and big black eyes.  I met her on the ship.  Such a nice girl!  Want to meet her?” 
    The rest is in those letters.