To Anne Katrine, Ancestor

One of my sisters is just seventeen months older than I. We shared a bedroom, imaginative games, clothes and curling irons but, like most siblings, we also endured plenty of spats.

In an effort to help us learn the importance of getting along, our mom used to tell us about her grandmother who emigrated from Denmark to Utah when she was five years old with her eleven-year-old sister for company. Recently converted to the LDS church, their family was too poor to travel together to Zion. Instead, their parents sent the children one by one or in pairs, as finances permitted. An older sister had already settled in Ephraim, Utah and two sister missionaries agreed to watch over the little girls during the long journey. But they were often left to themselves on the ship and food was sometimes scanty. When the girls finally reached Utah, life with their sister and her family was sometimes less-than-ideal. My great-grandmother grew up, eventually married and moved to Emery, Utah. I'm grateful for her family's sacrifices that provided me with so many blessings.

As a parent, I find it hard to imagine the pain of sending such young daughters on an uncertain journey. But persecution of Danish converts was often severe, sometimes to the point where the safety of girls was threatened. I don't know if this was the case in my ancestors' family, but I tried to capture what my great-great-grandmother might have felt in the following poem, "To Anne Katrine, Ancestor".  I first wrote it when our daughter was small. After a decade of receiving rejection slips and revising, I was happy when the poem finally appeared on the pages of Irreantum, a LDS literary journal. By that time, our daughter had graduated from high school. Cheers for the virtue of perserverence.

To Anne Katrine, Ancestor
Aarhus, Denmark

Perhaps you never remembered
slipping that last coin into
safe-keeping--
only an evening,
counting everything out,
when your husband whispered
"We'll send them now."

You knew to not
watch by your little girls' bed
as he smoothed their curls
away from closed eyes.
A window must be latched
against the dark rain,
another satchel packed
for their passage
to Zion.

At the harbor,
he stepped aside
to buy a gift of oranges
while you wondered if
the salty wind
would wear into hunger
that could not let
these children sleep.

Sails and a mist
drew them from view:
your last-born
almost mindful
of oceans and years,
her sister solemnly bearing
their untasted fruit.