Off the boat. As a grandson of immigrants, it's a term I've heard often, as in, "Oh, his grandfather (mother) was off the boat." I've always understood a vague negative connotion with that term. Perhaps that's just my perception, but I was very proud of my grandparents. I couldn't help but see them in this painting as I worked on it.

On my mother's side, they came from Poland. Grandma Pawlikowski came through Ellis Island when she was very young and was married while still a teen ager. I never met my grandfather on that side. He took off, leaving this tiny but tough Polish woman with 6 mouths to feed. So, she ran a deli from the front room of her house and raised her kids in a happy environment. She sent two sons to WWII and one daughter to become a "rosie the riveter". Even after the deli closed, she continued to make her own bread, egg noodles, stuffed cabbage (glumpkis), and pierogies. When her husband died alone down in South Jersey, she had to identify his body as next of kin. When the coroner pulled the shroud back, she leaned over the dead man and whispered, "You can't run from me now, can you?" Anna really was a sweetheart, but as I said, a tough little bird too.

On my dad's side, they came from northern Italy. Irma, my grandmother, came through Ellis Island too but my grandfather took a more roundabout route. Pietro was supposed to become a priest, but that really wasn't on his personal agenda. He left the seminary school at age 16 and hopped a boat to Canada. There he took the unlikely job of lumberjack. It's hard to imagine this little Italian guy in plaid shirt swinging an ax, but that's what he did! Eventually, he crossed a train bridge, dangling underneath it when the trains came through, into the United States and made his way to New York where relatives set him up as a tile setter. Some of his work is no doubt still on the walls of the tunnels and subways stations where he worked. There, he also met Irma, who was from his home province of Friuli, and married her. Eventually, he saved enough money to buy a house in the suburbs, have three kids and start his own business, Linden Tile Company, which my dad also ran (me too, for a little while). Grandma was a party girl and Grandpa had a quiet dignity about him...though I don't think he was exactly a saint! Together they were quite a couple.

My grandparents where two, very different American success stories. There are millions more like them. They were given nothing but want they wanted most of all; an opportunity. Maybe the term "off the boat" should have a little more swagger about it, don't you think?