New Homeby Grete Carlson
There was a time when I wished I was born in America instead of Norway, a time when I wished I was not a first-generation, came-over-on-the-boat, started-out-with-nothing immigrant.
In fact, when I reached that unnerving first year of junior high and didn’t like much of anything about myself, I decided to change my name to “Marie”—a name no one mispronounced or misspelled, a name teenage boys couldn’t turn into teasing about lefse and lutefisk.
But I got over it.
So my name is still Grete—spelled with an “e” but pronounced here in the U.S. with “a” at the end. Only people born speaking a language other than English can manage the leaps of the larynx needed to pronounce it correctly.
By the time I was six and my brother three, my parents had been saving every krøne for years to either build a gas station in Norway or buy four tickets for the Great American Dream. When both a business permit and U.S. visas arrived, they decided an American education and opportunity for their children trumped everything comfortable and known. So they sold what they couldn’t pack into three wooden trunks, nestling my grandmother’s fine china in down comforters.
Our tiny cabin on the S. S. Stavangerfjord vibrated from proximity to giant propellers, and luggage ricocheted under our beds in high rolling seas for much of the nine-day crossing. Mom, who’d fished in seagoing boats since girlhood, did fine. Dad, who grew up in the mountains, was seasick. For Harry and me, it was a great adventure, sleeping in beds mounted over our heads and running down corridors peopled by storybook characters.
As we entered New York Harbor on Oct. 11, 1954—Columbus Day—we rushed to the top deck, and my father lifted me to see the Statue of Liberty. We watched the ship’s cranes unload. One bundle broke loose and crashed, and my mother wept over the loss of grandmother’s china. Coming ashore, she shushed me as I pointed at longshoremen: “Svarte manfolk!” I’d never seen people of color—only heard about them in missionary stories.
My parents reeled at U.S. prices, so we ate only one daily meal during our cross-country train trip, making do with shipboard leftovers and homemade sausage dad carved with his pocketknife. Our tender-eyed train porter dropped sandwiches in my lap and nodded toward my brother. I was to share. Oranges, tropical miracles, were delivered by gentle black hands. When I babbled that his kindness made me forget his dirty skin, my parents were grateful I couldn’t speak English.
My father found work as a carpenter in Seattle, a three-bus transfer from where we lived in a relative’s attic. He left in the early morning darkness, hefting his bulky tool chest, gesturing to the bus driver to verify transfer numbers written on a scrap of paper he kept in his pocket.
I had talked of nothing but starting school in America for months and couldn’t wait to have my own desk and books and new friends. The first day I excitedly dressed in a knee-length wool coat, matching tights and lambskin-lined boots. My mom held my hand, nudging me into the classroom.
The American girls wore short parkas, ruffled anklets, and brown and white saddle shoes. They snickered, and one girl pulled curiously at my cabled leggings. The next day I stayed home with a stomachache. The day after, I decided to quit school. But my mother chattered and encouraged and dragged me eight blocks to my classroom, day after rainy day. I cried. My bare legs froze. Recently, my mother admitted that after cheerfully pushing me into my classroom, she wept the whole way home.
My beautiful Swedish-born teacher adapted lesson plans, and we made crayon drawings of an ocean liner carrying a yellow-haired girl over a blue sea, captioned: “Grete came on a big boat. Grete came from Norway.” By December, I was teaching classmates a Norwegian Christmas carol, and as they stammered and mispronounced words, they learned more than a new song.
Grete Helstad Carlson is a freelance writer who lives in Orange City. Her husband, Doug, is professor of history and associate dean of global education at Northwestern. They have two daughters: Katie attended NWC and now lives in Seattle; Jennifer is a Northwestern freshman.