My father called me early Saturday morning. "Why you not post what we talk about?" He asked in his thick Slavic accent.

"I didn't feel like it." I confessed. "I'm so busy Tata."

"You have the blog. To talk about what you feel. It's your duty to tell your kids how you feel."

Banging my head against the wall. I called him the night before to ask him why he chose to come to America instead of other countries. A million hours later, I had answers but no blog post. This is for him and my children.

***

Twenty-eight years ago, one rainy night in October, my parents locked their apartment door in Gdansk and never looked back.

They placed their two sleeping daughters on top of a mound of clothes in the back of a green Fiat, two weeks before martial law shut down Poland's borders. Knowing no other language. No other way of life. They drove through the darkness seeking temporary refugee in Austria and contemplated their future. Where would the road lead them? They were uncertain.

When I look at the passport photo of my mom with my sister and I, taken just weeks before our departure, I often wonder what she was feeling at that very moment. Was she thinking about leaving her family and friends behind? Was she thinking about our new beginnings? Or was she thinking *ahem* about getting my bangs cut the next morning? I can not even begin to imagine what she was thinking, that one rainy night, when the green Fiat drove her further and further away from family and friends.

When I ask my parents about the night we left Poland, they repeat only one word. Opportunity.

Hopeful, young, displaced families from every Communistic state in Eastern Europe surrounded us for one year in Ybbs, Austria. Each family rented a room at the inn while they waited for their travel clearances - two single beds, one dresser and four walls that hope echoed in. And every night the families gathered in the dinning room to discuss their plans.

"Where should we go? The future is ours." The twenty-something-year-old men of the families came together, after a long day of working odd-and-end jobs. The former doctors and engineers from Poland and beyond, spent their days scrapping metal from junk yards to save enough money for plane tickets. It must have been an exciting, but yet degrading, time for them all.

Young, hopeful, spinning the globe and trying to figure out where they belonged, they argued. Australia! Sweden! France! Canada! "No. No. I'm taking my family to America. For opportunity." My father said. Jo's father, right besides mine, was the only other one that agreed with him while sitting in that smoked-filled Ybbs inn. For months, before departing their temporary one-room abodes, the group of men continued to argue over the best place to raise their families. Some recommended this country because of it's incredible health plans. Others advised that country because of it's amazing free education system. A few suggested that other country because, well, everything was free and you could retire at a young age.

My father chose America. "For the opportunity. Not hope." He repeated over the phone. "When there's opportunity, there's hope."

Because of my parent's hard work (my father was a stranger to me growing up as he the former engineer, laid roof tiles for a living before embarking on his own business) I was taught to always push for more and settle for nothing (like re-vamping three houses before turning 30) because it was possible in the land of opportunity. I'm not going to talk politics - really, I'm not. I just want to make a point from the perspective of an immigrant. It makes me sad when Americans say "we should be more like... Australia! Sweden! France! And.... Canada!" And "we should be like the rest of the world." Really? Is the rest of the world swimming over one another to get into France? Or leaving everything they know behind to get into Sweden? Perhaps they are sleeping on top of clothes (like we did) to secretly cross into Canada? Or jumping over fences to get into Australia. No. We. Are. Different. Why should we be like everyone else? Granted things in the United States should change (like health care - I very much dislike Obama's plan and lots and lots of his proposals - but I do agree that we need change and better coverage - speaking from someone who wasn't covered until marriage). But. I'm very much opposed to the view that we should become like everyone else. Hallo.... Greece bail-outs. In October I tisked-tisked BlogHer for promoting only one view. But, today I thank BlogHer for posting the minority view.

I don't know how to end this, for the sake of my children. I should give my head strong Tata the microphone. He would finish it by telling my kids that his fellow Ybbs friends ended up in America, years after us, to seek the same opportunity that he had found. He wasn't lucky. I'm not lucky. My kids are lucky to know of grandparents that came to America with $500 in their pockets and ended up *here*.