Читать книгу Westward. Encounters with Swiss American Women онлайн

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After only six years of married life Ed died of a pancreatic illness. Rosa was 45, a widow, alone again. “I was forced to find a new direction for my life. Should I return to Switzerland? No, that was out of the question. At my age I would hardly have found a job. Mother would have been happy. Yet with work and a college education I had developed my life here, and America had become my home.” Rosa had not worked during her marriage, now she worked in various temp positions, then was for a time assistant to a retired economics professor from Princeton, and later was employed by a brokerage firm. “I wanted to be free, to be able to travel, to visit my mother as often as possible. In 1993 she peacefully died in her sleep at the age of 100. Fortunately I was with her when she died.”

Though Rosa went to many cultural events, she did not like the evenings she spent in her New York apartment. “This was not good for me; I felt empty and had to find something meaningful to do.”

On a Saturday morning she came by chance across a police van with a team that was recruiting volunteers for the auxiliary police in her neighborhood. “Working for the police, why not? I said to myself and filled out an application. A few days later I received a call from the police station of my district; was I still interested? Of course I was.”