Ask previous generations about their life stories
There’s a picture of my Lithuanian grandmother, Cecelia Bachalis, hanging in my kitchen. She’s in her grocery store in Deutzville, a section of south Trenton, holding a loaf of Fleischmann’s white bread in front of shelves filled with a wide variety of Campbell soups. It was part of a promotion that the old bread company was putting on at the time.
She’s beaming a beautiful smile, looking straight at the camera, as happy as a grocer could be. I came into possession of the photo when my parents moved from the house we grew up in; it was stuck in the back of a closet in my sister’s room, if I recall correctly.