When my grandma was 17 years old, she made up her mind that she wanted to leave her friends, family, and home in Munkacs, Hungary, and emigrate to America. Her parents wouldn’t have it. So she did it anyway. It was 1937.

Here’s the photo from her US Certificate of Naturalization:

I could spend the entire rest of my life trying, and I’d never catch up to being this poised, this collected, this cool.