A SIX YEAR OLD IN DENMARK IN 1913.

A SIX YEAR OLD IN DENMARK IN 1913. My mother went back to Denmark with her family in 1913 at the age of six. For immigrants to return home was not unusual. I remember Professor Kuznets saying that a surprisingly large percentage of immigrants to the United States during the period between the Civil War and World War I chose not to stay in the United States. My mother was disappointed that Denmark was not that different from the United States. “I had thought that people would live in tents.” She never forgot the beer soup. Her Uncle Peter was strict, not only about the beer soup. There is a picture of my mother with her brother Walter, one year younger. Walter’s head is shaved–Uncle Peter’s doing. My mother remembered the clogs that were worn in the house. She forgot English in the course of a year–only one year because my grandfather became convinced that a European war was coming and managed to get the family back to America, this time for good. A young woman relative came with them to help care for the children. When they got to the United States, she went off on her own and was never seen again. I imagine this was also not unusual. America offered freedom, anonymity and perhaps danger. My mother spoke Danish (with a child’s vocabulary she was told) to the end of her life, even when in the last five years of her life she forgot almost everything else.