The first thing she shows me is her statue of the Blessed Mother, brought all the way from Jersey to stand in a corner of the yard, paler than Colorado snow. That statue just never gets dirty. She can see it from her new bedroom window, two thousand miles west from her little house in Garfield, where she once stood at the head of the table, nodding as her son said the holiday blessing and said it right. She’d walk around the table and offer the oplatek to each of us, murmuring good wishes for the coming year as we broke off our little piece of the bread, and bless us once again, her smile translating any words we might have missed. In the kitchen, her daughters complain goodnaturedly about that statue, how heavy it is, and shake their heads a bit. But every time they bring her tea, they bend down to kiss her cheek and call her Ma. She says she will put a desk under the window of her room, so she can see the Blessed Mother whenever she looks up. I ask what she will write there and her eyes fill with tears, and a tumble of Russian falls from her lips, Russian blending with the West. She has come so far, buried so much, long before she ever signed her name at Ellis Island. She won’t speak of any of it, remarks only how hard it is to leave her home, her little house in Garfield. She brought as much as she could, including her statue, and she’s ready, she says, ready to face the West.