There is a Book in All of Us

Statues: The People They Salute

Pictured above is my grandfather as a little boy in America, with his sister Annie and his aunt (Tante Rosie). This little boy did not know his life would include ping ponging back and forth a few times across an ocean, from America, to Switzerland and finally ending up in America with a wife and two children, one of them – my mother. If my grandfather did not end up in America, my story would never have begun.

My grandfather would often conclude a long talk with me by saying, “There’s a book in all of us…ay, Schatzi?” Schatzi is what my grandfather called me. It means sweetie, in Swiss. He was born in Brooklyn, but went to live in Switzerland with his father, stepmother and little sister in 1922, when he was 11 years old.

My grandfather’s father was born in Switzerland and had come to America as a young man, but for a reason unknown to me brought his family back to Switzerland. My grandfather’s father had promised to pay passage for my grandfather to return to America when he turned 18 if he wished. It turns out that my grandfather did wish to return to America, as did his 16-year-old sister; so they did.

A few years later, my grandfather had to go back to Switzerland, because his father was ill and his stepmother needed help. This ping-ponging across the Atlantic Ocean my grandfather had done before turning 21 caught my attention. Always a lover of books, I also enjoyed writing and knew one day I would write a book.

When my grandfather ended lengthy, winding conversations with, “There’s a book in all of us.” I used to think that there was more than one book in me, and I planned on writing them. Well, it took me many more years than I had anticipated to complete my first book, but I did it. What was the subject of my book? My 13-year-old mother’s move to America from Switzerland with her family.

Yes, my grandfather had always wished to return to America; and he did. This time with teenaged children and a wife. My mother and her family journeyed to America on board the ocean liner, the Queen Elizabeth, in 1949.

The February sea was rough, and she told me trying to get to the top deck for fresh air to fight seasickness was challenging. Going upstairs, felt like going downstairs.

Life for my 13-year-old mom was upside down for a while in her new world, which was Queens, New York. She did not understand or speak the language, and she had left relatives and friends an ocean away. At the time, she feared she may even have left herself behind. But, she held firmly onto the rail and climbed that staircase to the fresh air.

The book I finally wrote is fiction, but heavily based on my mom’s experience. One chapter follows my mom on a daytrip from her city apartment in Queens to Holbrook via the Long Island Railroad to visit her great aunt (Tante Rosie), that had a chicken coop, a hand pump to get water and an outhouse. Tante Rosie, is pictured above with my grandfather as a little boy in America, with his sister Annie.

There are times we all feel like a ping-pong ball just trying to clear the net, or that our efforts to get upstairs are bringing us downstairs. My book, “Coming to America: A Girl Struggles to Find her Way in a New World“, that was in me, connects with people of all ages that are struggling to make their way in the world. Life throws challenges at us, and we must not give up.

I know there are more books in me, and I will write them. I bet my grandfather was right. You too, have a book in you. Maybe reading my book, will inspire you to write the books in you based on your family stories.

Diana Erbio is a freelance writer and author of “Coming to America: A Girl Struggles to Find her Way in a New World”. Read more in her series Statues: The People They Salute visit The Table of Contents and the Facebook Page. (Please consider subscribing to this Substack for essays and the Blog Series about the subjects of statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection 😊🇺🇸🤓)

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