Oregon150

Grandma, why did you hide
behind that rigid, self-sufficient mask,
rarely pulling that curtain aside
to let the soul show?

Were you scared, Grandma,
a too-young Finnish widow,
working your way from Michigan to Astoria,
creating clothes from newspaper patterns,
herding three little ones through train cars,
leaving your parents far behind?

Did you want to keep going
over the wild Pacific,
arrive in Japan or Taiwan,
make clothes from home-grown silk,
pile the children in rickshaws
and learn to use chopsticks?

Or did you feel at home right away
in Oregon, the state that gave you another husband,
a tight-lipped Swede who once you chased
with a frying pan, and who sired
your next four children?

Did you take to your bed, Grandma,
when your oldest son fell from a paddle-wheeler
into the Willamette and drowned,
like your daughter, our mother did,
when her eldest succumbed to polio?

Did you ever guess, Grandma, that your descendants
would cross the oceans many times,
fight in wars, ride in pedicabs and kamikaze taxis,
wade through typhoon debris, learn to eat sushi,
live in Africa where your great-grandson teased
six foot cobras, hunt ancestors in Finland,
explore Europe, yet always rush
eagerly back to Oregon where they raised
more little ones than you could have imagined
when you willed your way west
and became our own pioneer Grandma?