Gray towers of apartment buildings, all rectangular and identical. Gray piles of coal waste where children climb and play, pretending they are hills. Gray chimney stacks on the horizon, spewing gray smoke into the perpetually gray sky above. Red puddles of blood, splattered on the pavement where protestors were shot down by the police. Red flags of the Soviet oppressors flying overhead. This is the communist-ruled Poland my mom fled after the Solidarity movement fell. She came to America, in pursuit of freedom, on a quest for the American Dream. Sitting over a pierogi dinner, my mom told me the story of her arrival in America. As the plane approached its destination, she noticed the outline of Long Island through the window, just like she remembered