I recently looked at these three photos which seem a snapshot of the immigrant experience. The oldest photo from 1937 is of my mother at her “Sweet 16” party (although I don’t know if they had such a thing in Vienna) - she is seated on the right. On the wall behind the girls is a portrait of my grandmother. Then there’s a photo of the three generations of women in my family - my grandmother, my mother, and me - all together in San Francisco. Finally, there’s a photo with my mother, uncle, and my mother’s caregiver sitting in my mother’s apartment just a few months before she died. Behind them is the same portrait that appears in the photo in Vienna more than 70 years earlier. The portrait and the people all survived such amazing odds to create a life and a family in San Francisco. While my mother was alive, I loved the idea of her mother watching over her.
Eva’s “Sweet 16”
Three generations
Across the years and across the seas