April 18th, 1906

It was sudden.

One moment we’re having breakfast around our small wooden kitchen table. And the next, Grandma’s face goes pale. Everything around us is shaking.

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Our family moved to San Francisco in the spring of 1898. But we first immigrated to America from Russia the year prior, beginning our new life in New York. I was quite young, yet I vividly remember Lady Liberty as we sailed into Ellis Island. Something magical exuded from her – almost as though she greeted everyone with a warm “Welcome.”

From Ellis Island, we moved into a tenement on Mulberry Street, into the crowd of immigrants just like us.

“I feel like I’m back in Russia,” Mama would mutter.

I think she missed family and friends but didn’t want to say so. Bitterness sounded, and maybe even tasted, better than longing.

After a year, we packed our bags and moved west. Papa chose San Francisco because it was the farthest American city from New York. And Mama needed far.

We settled in a small Victorian home on a hilly street a few miles outside downtown. Most of our neighbors lived in houses built by their parents or grandparents, folks who came for the Gold Rush in ’49. This group, though, were the ones who never found gold. But the adventure had been worth it. And the climate kept them.

Here, Mama baked and sewed and grew tomatoes in wooden crates by the window. She joined a women’s reading circle and taught me how to write my name in Russian, then English, then both.

“So you’ll never forget who you are,” she said.

On weekends, if Papa wasn’t too tired, we’d ride the streetcar down to Market Street. That’s where all the magic was – chocolate shops and the wide glass windows of department stores. I remember once asking if we could go in.

Papa shook his head and smiled, “It’s for looking today. For going in tomorrow.”

That’s what San Francisco was to us. A dream. A path to a better tomorrow.

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We wake at 5 a.m. on weekdays. No exceptions.

The first time I complained, Mama gave me a look sharper than any knife in the kitchen.

“We woke at four to milk cows in Russia,” she said. “Consider yourself lucky.”

I did. After that.

Our mornings run like clockwork. Mama washes clothes for the neighbors, and I pick up the baskets before heading to school. Papa leaves early to be on the docks by six. But first, we have breakfast together, which Grandma makes. She insists.

“It’s the one time of day I see you all still and seated,” she says. “You can’t run from a plate.”

April 18th, 1906, begins like that – utterly ordinary. We’re at the table by 5:10. Grandma is slicing bread. Papa’s telling us the latest gossip from the old country.

I watch Grandma carefully butter a piece of bread and place it on my plate. She smiles faintly, the way she always does. Like this moment is her day’s dearest joy. She’s in her late sixties now but livelier than any of us. Where she gets her energy, none of us knows.

“We can make breakfast, Mama,” Papa would often tell her.

She’d just wave him off. “And what would you all eat? Burnt coffee and regret?”

I look up at the clock. It reads 5:11.

And the house begins to move.

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