Back to the USSR

My parents left everything behind in the Soviet Union for a better life. Their friends, clothes and careers couldn’t follow them aboard Delta flight 217, but poverty did. The picture is bleak, but there is hope. While they trudged to work in 99 cent stores and slept on cockroach-infested floors, they never lost their culture. Despite living in a new country with new customs, my parents were still Russian Jews at heart. I like to think that as they worked towards their American Dream and raised a family, one aspect of culture fueled them, both literally and figuratively — their food.