Author: Jessie Page 1 of 2

Welcome to My Eye Gaze World

On May 29, 2025

I took it for granted that you all know that I use eye gaze technology (I type with my eyes) to communicate in all forms: speaking, texting, and writing everything from emails to this blog post. That is, I took it for granted until my sister, Sephrah, said something that made me realize that only the people who have seen me within the past four years know my reality. In honor of ALS Awareness Month, I will now attempt to show you what it’s like to rely on eye gaze technology.

I have to type with my eyes, because I’m completely paralyzed except for a little bit of movement in my legs. I can still feel everything, which makes itches a lot of fun.

Before I continue, I want to clarify that I didn’t get ALS and immediately go to eye gaze. First, I was still able to type with my hands. As my right fingers became weaker, I did a modified version of touch typing with just my left hand. That lasted for about a year. When my hands got too weak to type, I used a voice to text software, which worked well, but I couldn’t use it around other people, both because the software wouldn’t work well with ambient noise, and because I was still teaching, and had to write confidential information about students.

My next phase started when ALS affected my speech so much that the software wouldn’t work. Jackie, the tech specialist from the ALS Association, came to my house and attached a camera to my laptop and put a silver dot in the corner of my glasses. This system let me manipulate the cursor by moving my head around to select the letter or icon I wanted, and then click by waiting for a few seconds. It was my favorite accommodation. It was fast, and the process led to few mistakes.

Eventually my neck got too weak for this system. Enter a tobii dynavox touch tablet with built-in eye gaze technology and a giant clicker button, which I held on my lap. I would use my eyes to select what I wanted, and press the button on my lap the way most people double click a mouse. Eventually, I couldn’t do the button anymore. I’m 100% eye gaze now.

Every time someone rolls me up to my device, the first thing we have to do is track my eyes. That means we line up the machine with my eyes. Here’s what the tracking screen looks like.

The white circles are my eyes and they have to be centered, and the white arrow has to be level with the white eyes. Distance, height, angle…it is harder than it looks, because if it’s not just so, one or both eyes will disappear, and the person who is helping me has to move the device around until it gets fixed. The lights on the bottom are what track my eyes. If they are blocked, I can’t do anything.

Next, I calibrate my eyes, which synchronizes my eyes with the machine – ideally. I calibrate by following circles around to nine points on the screen. See below for what the end result should look like. If the tracking is not perfect or my eyes are tired or watering, my eyes won’t be synchronized, and I will have trouble typing or doing anything with the machine. This usually means starting over again from the top with tracking and calibration.

This is the keyboard (see below) I use to type what I want to say and I often type other things and cut and paste into other documents, because it’s faster than the windows keyboard. I wanted to type “…I make mistakes all the time.”, but this is what I actually typed. That’s why I don’t like people reading what I’m typing over my shoulder. I make a lot of mistakes.

Notice that the question mark and other punctuation marks or numerals are not on this screen. For them, I have to switch to other screens. However, my biggest complaint about this keyboard is that there is no caps lock anywhere. The only way to capitalize every letter in a word or acronym is to do it one letter at a time and hope that I don’t select the wrong letter on my way. Imagine selecting whatever you look at. That’s my world.

It’s maddening when there is a video or animation on part of a website I’m looking at, because it is impossible for me to look away. You know the advertisements on YouTube that you can skip after four seconds? It takes me much longer than four seconds to skip the ads, because I can’t stop watching them. It’s like telling myself not to look at a car accident on the freeway; I can’t help but look anyway.

One more major complaint about eye gaze technology. No one has figured out how to get it to work with sunlight, so I can’t use it outside or in the car. That is the reason I don’t like to spend a lot of time outside, which is unfortunate, because I love nature. I need someone to create a collapsible awning, like the ones on baby strollers, to extend over my head and the device, shielding us from the sun.

I used to think that eye gaze technology had existed since the 1960s, because Stephen Hawking used it, but no. He used a muscle in his cheek to do all of his communication, including writing books! I don’t have any muscles in my face that I can control to communicate. I recently found out from Jason Becker, who has been living with ALS for 30 years, that 20 years ago, eye gaze technology was terrible. For all the complaining I do about my device, I am lucky to have access to the assistive technology available today. If I had been diagnosed even just 5 or 10 years earlier, I would be silent by comparison and certainly wouldn’t be able to write.

Mrs. Prezioso and Why I Loved Geometry

By Jessie

On April 28, 2025

In living with ALS, teachers

Senator Elizabeth Warren is collecting stories from Americans: “If you have a favorite memory from public school, you could only go to school because you got financial aid, or you have any story that can remind people why we need to save these programs [of the Department of Education] share it now.” I shared an abbreviated version of my Tribute to Miss Brooks, and now I’m sharing with you my memories of another dear teacher: Mrs. Prezioso, my ninth grade geometry teacher. Senator Warren is reading some of the stories from the Senate floor, with the author’s permission. I invite you to send her your story.

On the first day of geometry class, Mrs. Prezioso gave each of us an index card and invited us to write on it our feelings and experiences with math. I wrote that I didn’t like it and sometimes feared it. No one was more shocked than I, when geometry quickly became my favorite class in ninth grade.

I loved solving geometric proofs. They totally fit my abstract-sequential way of processing information and my affinity for logic. I remember the time I stared forever at a proof we had for homework, and finally saw the solution. It took three steps. After someone asked about it the next day, Mrs. Prezioso took everyone through her solution, which took about 25 steps. I waited silently for her to finish. Then I revealed my vastly more efficient solution. Mrs. Prezioso and my classmates were amazed. That sealed my fate as the “best” geometry mind and the teacher’s pet.

I was definitely the teacher’s pet. It was mutual. But what I remember most about Mrs . Prezioso is the rapport she had with all of us. She told us that she felt so comfortable with us that she did things that she would not do with other classes. She read The Missing Piece, by Shel Silverstein, to us, because she had used it for an exam in her Master’s program. She brought in the film of her on the television show Candid Camera when she was little. In order to make it clearer for confused students, and then because we got a kick out of it, she would stand in the front of the room and say, “I’m an isosceles triangle,” while holding her arms at angles to her sides, and then turn around to demonstrate that it was the same on both sides.

Mrs. Prezioso also shared with us that her son, who was in graduate school to be a psychologist, thought she was crazy because she loved math. Hearing that inspired me to create a sign using my family’s Macintosh computer. I drew a picture of Mrs. Prezioso, and above that it said MISSING. Below the picture, I wrote, “ Escaped from the institution where she was committed by her family because of her love for math. Be careful. She is disguised as an isosceles triangle.” I taped it to the chalkboard in front of the room before she got there. She took a really long time to turn around, and all of us were snickering and trying very hard not to bust out in guffaws. When Mrs. Prezioso finally turned around, she read the sign and laughed. I don’t remember if we did any geometry for the rest of the class. I was too busy beaming. (See below for the actual sign, a little different from how I remembered it.)

I remained in close contact with Mrs. Prezioso for the next 27 years. The summer before we went to college, Mrs. Prezioso took three of us who had stayed in touch with her to lunch. I continued to have lunch with Mrs. Prezioso whenever I was in town. I always looked forward to seeing her and catching up. Even when we corresponded by email, it was very special to see her in person, especially the time I brought baby Ethan to meet her. By then I called her by her first name, Arlene.

Mrs. Prezioso had to retire because of health problems. Her family suspected that her breathing problems were due to her years of exposure to black mold in the school following the remodel, which happened long after I graduated.

It got increasingly difficult to get together, because Mrs. Prezioso suffered from emphysema for at least the last 15 years of her life. More than once she had to cancel our get together, because she wasn’t up to it. She was hospitalized and almost died three times. Her husband spent those years caring for her. We said he was a saint, because of the way he devoted himself to her care.

We kept in touch until her death in 2012, 27 years after I was in her class. As much as she meant to me, there was no way I could have known that she would also offer me a model for living with a degenerative, fatal illness. I have often thought of Mrs. Prezioso since receiving my ALS diagnosis.

I really didn’t understand how she could be too tired to get together. Or how it could take her three days to recover from attending a function. Or how she could be happy just having her husband push her in her wheelchair around the grocery store. Now I do.

On our second date, I told Barry that I was not looking for a caregiver. I meant it, but I got one nonetheless. With Barry, I got my own saint. And I do what I can to be grateful for the small things that bring me joy.

Mrs. Prezioso with me in 1993.

The sign, courtesy of Mr. Prezioso . Spelling was never my forte.

On Language and Insomnia

By Jessie

On April 8, 2025

In living with ALS

I have had insomnia for years. I fall asleep with no problem, but I wake up and stay awake potentially for hours. If nothing distracts me, my thoughts will spin, and I will never fall asleep. Since I can’t get up and do something, my solution is to listen to podcasts.

One of my favorite podcasts is The History of English Podcast, by Kevin Stroud. It’s a fascinating, chronological history of English, from its Indo-European roots through modern English. There are 182 one-hour+ episodes so far, and I have listened to all of them many, many times. This is a great podcast to go to sleep to, because it’s interesting enough that my thoughts don’t wander, but not a nail biter that keeps me up to hear how the episode ends. Plus, each episode can stand on its own, so I don’t wake up and need to scroll to the top because I can’t follow what’s going on.

I especially love episode 165: ” Glamorous Grammar.” Grammar has always been one of my strengths, to the fury of my younger sister, whom I mercilessly corrected every chance I got.

Beginning in the 1580s, English scholars took an interest in English grammar. Prior to that, they focused only on Latin grammar. Here’s where I get giddy. The English scholars applied the rules of Latin grammar to English! The rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition? That’s because in Latin one can’t do it. I can verify it, having taken four years of high school Latin. I can really get behind eliminating that convention from English. It’s terribly awkward to find a way not to end a sentence with a preposition when the sentence begs to end with something like up, on, or under.

The convention I am having trouble giving up is not to split infinitives. It’s true that it’s impossible to split infinitives in Latin, because in Latin the infinitive is one word: amare, to love; cogitare, to think; esse, to be. If it’s impossible to split infinitives in Latin, why did the scholars of the 16th century even think of splitting infinitives?! I know that I don’t need to stop splitting infinitives, but I like to be right. If people are free to split Infinitives, the whole English speaking and writing world is going to be in chaos. On the other hand, if I have learned anything from the podcast, it is that the English language has endured many periods of chaos and survived.

A Tribute to Miss Brooks

By Jessie

On January 23, 2025

In teachers

Mrs. Burns, my kindergarten teacher, clearly loved my best friend, while she did nothing to hide her disdain for me. One day she caught me sticking my tongue out at a classmate in response to an insult. Her idea of teaching me not to do that was to make me stand at her desk and stick my tongue out at her. If I had had thicker skin, I would have enjoyed it, but I cried in humiliation the whole time.

According to my mother, when I came home on the last day of kindergarten, I declared, “Mrs. Burns may know how to teach, but she doesn’t know how to be nice and she doesn’t know how to take care of children.” Then my eyes welled up and I said, “I wanted to like her.”

Intending to avoid another Mrs. Burns, my mother requested that I have Miss Brooks, who had a reputation as an excellent first grade teacher. The administration complied.

I loved Miss Brooks. She was warm and kind, everything Mrs. Burns wasn’t. Whenever we left the classroom, we walked in a single file line, as is the way of elementary students everywhere. Miss Brooks walked next to the line, and always stuck her hand out for the student next to her to hold. I felt special whenever she chose me.

Miss Brooks didn’t play favorites. There were some boys in our class who were a handful, but I don’t remember her treating them differently from the more compliant kids. Don’t get me wrong. Miss Brooks ran a tight ship. But she was never mean.

All of Miss Brooks’s students knew that she loved mice. She had mouse stuffed animals, mouse stickers, and other mice themed things at her desk. We liked knowing something personal about our teacher. We also knew that she was Irish, because she taught us an Irish jig.

I will never forget the time when I was in third grade, (a big kid), and I was walking by myself from one end of the campus back to the third grade building. Miss Brooks was walking ahead of me, without her class. She turned around, saw me, stopped, and stuck her hand out. I held her hand the whole way back and told her about my summer, feeling special the whole time.

The year I started fourth grade, Miss Brooks moved to Rhode Island to take a job as the principal of an elementary school. I wrote to her, and she always wrote back. One time I sent her a gold mouse pin that I got from the prize bin in my dentist’s office. The mouse wore a red dress. Obviously it couldn’t have been high quality having come from my dentist’s prize bin, but you wouldn’t know that from Miss Brooks’s response. She thanked me for the pin and told me that she wore it on her red turtleneck on the first day at her new school. After I read that, I had the biggest grin for hours.

Another time, my friend Alicia and I wrote letters to her and included some cat stickers. I remember that in her reply, Miss Brooks wrote that she would keep the cat stickers away from her “mouse ones.”

When I moved to Rhode Island for graduate school I thought I would look up Miss Brooks. I spent hours on the phone with the receptionist for the principals association. I only knew the year she became a principal. I didn’t know the name of her school. The receptionist could not find her. I figured she got married and changed her name. Or maybe she moved to a different state.

I was crushed. Still am. Maybe it’s because I became a teacher that I wanted so much to reconnect with Miss Brooks. To tell her how she made me feel, because over the years, it has brought me so much joy whenever my former students have told me that I had a positive effect on them.

When I think about Miss Brooks now, I recall a passage in Jewish liturgy about getting to the promised land. It states, “…there is no way to get from here to there, except by joining hands, marching together.”

To read an earlier post about Miss Brooks, click here.

Mostly Food; Sometimes Drinks

By Jessie

On December 7, 2024

In living with ALS

I chose to have a feeding tube inserted in 2019 in anticipation of the day I would no longer be able to swallow comfortably or effectively. I have not eaten food by mouth since early 2021. At first I didn’t miss eating, because it was so unpleasant. I would gag and choke. My last meal was oatmeal.

I remember early in my tenure of not eating, I read in the blog of another person with ALS that she had no appetite but craved the texture of food. At the time, I didn’t get it. I had an appetite, but didn’t crave the texture of food. Now I get it. I long for the delightfully hard outside and chewy inside of a New York bagel. Better still if it comes with lox and cream cheese from Russ and Daughters. My mouth waters at the thought of the thinly sliced, silky cured salmon with a hint of saltiness, paired perfectly with double-whipped cream cheese. Heaven.

As I indulge myself reminiscing about the food I miss most, I have to include my favorite dishes of all time. First, Nime Chow ( Cambodian fresh spring rolls). If you’re familiar with Thai fresh spring rolls, these are similar. The greatest difference is the dipping sauce. Cambodians don’t use peanut sauce. Instead, they make a sauce out of white vinegar, sugar, lime juice, hot water, and fish sauce, with chopped peanuts on top. The sauce, spooned onto each bite, is what makes the experience. It’s thin, more like a dressing, and tangy, sweet, and salty. Again, my mouth waters imagining it. The other of my all-time favorite dishes is Bee Bong, a Cambodian noodle dish with thin rice noodles in coconut milk and baby corn, plus other vegetables. The warm rice noodles in warm coconut milk make it the ultimate comfort food. Both Nime Chow and Bee Bong are available at my all-time favorite restaurant: Apsara in Providence, Rhode Island.

Next, I desperately miss my favorite breakfast: granola with yogurt and blueberries. The blueberries were preferably fresh, either from the farmers’ market or from the farm where the boys and I picked our own. I miss the texture of the crunchy granola and nuts, along with the creamy, plain yogurt and plump blueberries. I have to credit my dad for introducing me to this breakfast. He ate it nearly every morning of his adult life.

Lastly, I miss whatever my family is eating. I have learned that the cravings for whatever they are eating are not terrible if I have a full stomach. But I still long to join them.

Sometimes I get a wicked craving for lemonade or ginger ale. Or just fresh, cold water.

It is hard to get my head around the fact that I will never eat food or drink anything again. I know there are people who would not want to live such a life, but I am not one of them. I want to continue living even with all of these losses. I’m having too much fun and I’m not done with all of the things I want to do. Besides, I eat in my dreams.

A Dressy Jessie Coda

By Jessie

On October 27, 2024

In family, living with ALS, loss

For posterity (and for everyone who missed it on Facebook), I want to record the two updates here to that story.

I notified subscribers that I had added a picture of Max’s Origami Yoda finger puppet, as well as the recording of my pitch to The Moth, to the Dressy Jessie post. Then, unbeknownst to me, my friend David Lasky, artist and graphic novelist, sent my Dressy Jessie story to his friend, TOM ANGLEBURGER, author of the Origami Yoda series. Tom emailed me a note, appreciating Max’s Jedi wisdom and attached two drawings!!! Here are the drawings:

Dwight, the character who brings the Origami Yoda finger puppet to school, with the finger puppet.

The Origami Yoda finger puppet.

In my reply, I asked him a question about the end of the series that I was certain everyone asks. Turns out that no one has asked that question, and he wrote a generously long response. It’s great when a famous person turns out to be a mensch.

But wait, there’s more. A couple of weeks after getting the emails from Tom (we’re on a first name basis now) I received this surprise from Jay Lender, creator of the original Dressy Jessie!!! Here is the cover and two of the outfits: The Laugher and Cyber Babe.

Benefits to losing Dressy Jessie there are.

Another Public Service Announcement

By Jessie

On September 2, 2024

In living with ALS, Uncategorized

Or, why I need to have a fundraiser for my care^*

The very next thing on my financial advisor’s list for me in autumn 2017 was long-term care insurance. However, I got my ALS diagnosis before I started the process, and my financial advisor said, “Now you can’t get it anywhere at any price.”

The irony of out living my prognosis and the standard ALS statistics (2.5-5 years from diagnosis) is there is no agency to fund my care. Medicare doesn’t, nor does my supplemental medical insurance. The ALS Association doesn’t fund home care, and neither does the Steve Gleason Foundation. I could spend down my assets to no more than $$2,000 and go on Medicaid, which does fund home care at a terribly low hourly rate. But given the look back period (5 years in Washington state), I would likely die before I finally qualified.

I have exhausted all sources of funding available to me over five years of paying for caregivers. These sources have included savings and taking the maximum possible accelerated death benefit from my life insurance policy.

What really must happen in this country is for Medicare to cover home health care. That would allow people to stay in their homes without having to impoverish themselves. However, it won’t happen until Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House. Until then, I urge you all to purchase long-term care insurance.

Blessings

*A huge thank you to all who have contributed to my GoFundMe campaign. This truly is a public service announcement — not a sales pitch.

A Public Service Announcement

By Jessie

On April 12, 2024

In living with ALS

In the series finale of The Crown, the Duke of Edinburgh is gleefully planning his own funeral. Since I planned my funeral a couple of years ago, I related to his glee. My funeral will have none of the pageantry that was in the Duke’s funeral, thank goodness, but there is something very gratifying about taking care of this final act and sparing my loved ones from the decision making and the expense during their grief.

When my friend Roberta was planning her mother’s memorial service, and struggling with her siblings to agree on the time and place, I told her that I had already planned my funeral. She said, “I love that idea!” And with that Roberta and her husband got started planning their memorial services.

I’m sure that I would not have planned my funeral in mid life if I didn’t have a terminal illness. It’s just like making a will. Few people do it before they reach their golden years. But as my friend Lisa Booth, a stage four cancer survivor, said when I asked her for advice about telling my kids that I have a terminal illness, “all we really have is today.” Every time I hear about a fatal car accident or a mass shooting, I hear her words.

While the Duke was enthusiastic about planning his funeral, Queen Elizabeth felt the opposite about planning hers. She told the Duke to stop talking about it because, “it’s too sad.” I don’t know if that feeling is what stops more people from doing estate planning, but I would argue that for those of us who are not royalty, failing to do so will be much sadder for those we leave behind.

I recommend the site Get Your Shit Together – for advice on what to gather in the event of your death to make it as easy as possible for your loved ones.The woman who created the website, her husband died in a bicycle accident and had not prepared for this eventually. She‘s a reluctant expert.

Blessings.

Friends and Neighbors

By Jessie

On May 3, 2022

In living with ALS

At one of my first ALS support group meetings, our host, Carl, said, “When you have ALS, your address book changes. You learn who your true friends are.” That has not been my experience. All of my friends have remained steadfast. They visit often, although Covid, off and on, has disrupted my willingness to have visitors. They stay in touch by email, and the local ones eagerly volunteer to help when I put out a call. Moreover, my friends treat me exactly the same as they did before I lost my ability to speak and move. I am very lucky.

I have been lucky in other ways. One of the first things I did after I got my ALS diagnosis, was start looking for a new house. We were living in a three-story townhouse, and I knew it was a race against time before I could no longer climb stairs. I wanted to buy a single-story house with four bedrooms and two bathrooms, within walking distance to the boys’ schools. It was a very tall order.

After looking for nine months, I found the ideal house. While I still had the option to back out, my realtor, Tara Farquhar, advised me to meet the neighbors on either side, “in case they turn[ed] out to be crazy.”

On an evening in late July, I ventured to my future neighborhood. After meeting Sandra and Jeff to the south, and Chiara and Nate to the north, I felt like I had won the neighbor jackpot. Not only did they welcome me enthusiastically, each couple also invited the boys and me to the upcoming annual neighborhood night out. I said a silent thank you to Tara for urging me to introduce myself to the neighbors.

Shortly after we moved in, I wrote to Sandra, Jeff, Nate and Chiara about my ALS. They responded with warmth and offers of help. After I stopped working, I needed help making phone calls and filling out forms. Sandra, who was retired, often came over to help me with those tasks. Having worked in the insurance industry for many years, she was especially helpful when we called my auto insurance company about my policy. She was (and still is) my go-to person for all kinds of assistance. I distinctly remember texting Sandra when I couldn’t unscrew the cap on the soy milk container, back when I was still eating, but my hands were very weak. She came right over.

Sandra’s husband, Jeff, has been my unofficial electrician. He replaced a lighting fixture for me, down to the wiring. When the power went out in my bathroom, Jeff diagnosed the problem and replaced the faulty outlet. In addition to his electrical prowess, he used to be a professional bicycle mechanic, and has all the necessary equipment. Last spring he gave the boys’ bikes full tune ups.

After I told my neighbors about my ALS, Sandra shared the news with Julia and Joe, who live across the street from her. Julia, whom I hadn’t met yet, also wanted to help me. Before long, Julia became one of my volunteer caregivers. She got me out of bed on Thursday and Saturday afternoons, took me to the bathroom, and gave me my formula through my feeding tube, all while we had a wonderful visit together. This went on for many months, with Sandra joining in when transferring me became more challenging.

Joe, Julia’s husband, has offered to read to me. I have not taken him up on it yet, because of time. I have taken him up on his annual art sale. Joe is an avid photographer and painter. Each December, he has a show of his work, and asks the buyers to donate the money to a hunger relief organization instead of paying him. Since their house is not accessible to me in my power chair, Joe and Julia brought the art to me for a private showing.

When we had a powerful windstorm a couple of years ago, a section of my fence blew over. Chiara and Nate noticed, and propped it up so well that it has withstood subsequent windstorms. On another occasion, I heard what sounded like someone on the roof. When I looked out the living room window, I saw Nate climbing down a ladder from my roof, holding his leaf blower. He told me that he was cleaning my roof and gutters before the rains came.

Whenever I think of my great good fortune with friends and neighbors, I recall the parable of the man in the flood. There are many versions of the parable. I will quote the one from the “Take this Sabbath Day” episode of The West Wing, since it’s where I first heard the parable. In this scene, Father Thomas Kavanagh speaks to President Bartlett:

You remind me of the man that lived by the river. He heard a radio report that the river was going to rush up and flood the town, and that all the residents should evacuate their homes. But the man said, “I’m religious. I pray. God loves me. God will save me.” The waters rose up. A guy in a rowboat came along and he shouted, “Hey, hey you, you in there. The town is flooding. Let me take you to safety.” But the man shouted back, “I’m religious. I pray. God loves me. God will save me.” A helicopter was hovering overhead and a guy with a megaphone shouted, “Hey you, you down there. The town is flooding. Let me drop this ladder and I’ll take you to safety.” But the man shouted back that he was religious, that he prayed, that God loved him and that God will take him to safety. Well… the man drowned. And standing at the gates of St. Peter he demanded an audience with God. “Lord,” he said, “I’m a religious man, I pray, I thought you loved me. Why did this happen?” God said, “I sent you a radio report, a helicopter and a guy in a rowboat. What the hell are you doing here?”

ALS is the most tragic thing that has happened to me, but I don’t ask God why it happened. Instead, I thank God every day for sending me the many, many people who have made having ALS easier, including Sandra and Jeff, Julia and Joe, and Chiara and Nate.

Fleeing Ukraine

By Jessie

On March 4, 2022

In family

I had been working on a different post, but listening to the tragic plight of Ukrainians fleeing their country, I can’t help thinking of another story of flight from Ukraine, which I heard throughout my childhood. My grandmother, Miriam, her younger brother, Sam, and mother, Sarah, escaped the city of Kamenetz-Podolsk in Ukraine 100 years ago. Theirs was an escape from pogroms, violent attacks against Jewish people, which had occurred throughout Europe for centuries.

Ukrainians fleeing today wait for days to cross the border into Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, or Romania. One hundred years ago, it took my grandmother and her family three attempts over three years to cross the border into Romania. The most indelible part of their story for everyone who heard it, involved them walking across the frozen Dniester river at night. They had to bribe a soldier in advance to let them cross the river. On their first attempt, the soldier at the far bank of the river was not the one they had bribed, so they had to turn back.

As they were crossing the frozen river for the third time, the ice under Miriam’s feet suddenly cracked, and she fell in. Not wanting to attract attention, she didn’t call out. Only because Sarah happened to turn around and saw that her daughter was not there, did Sarah get to Miriam in time to pull her out.

After making their way through a series of European countries, Sarah, Miriam, and Sam met Sarah’s father in Paris. From there, they were to journey to America. Tragically, Sarah’s father had an ear infection and was not allowed to accompany them. Miriam cried and cried, knowing she would never see her grandfather again. I think of that scene every time I hear an interview with Ukrainians who have had to leave family members behind during the past week, not knowing if they will ever see their loved ones again.

Were my grandmother alive today, her heart would break for the Ukrainians fleeing Russian soldiers. She would also be amazed and delighted that the people of Ukraine elected Volodymyr Zelensky, a Jewish man, for their president, and she would pray for his continued strength and safety.

Amen.