Narratives and meanings of migration

I may have not understood that we were leaving for good. But, I did understand that my grandmother, my beloved babushka, was not going with us. I was five and a half years old and during most of these years I lived with her. We were all standing on the platform - me, my parents with my baby sister in their arms and my grandmother - about to climb the green long train that would take us from the Russian border checkpoint to Poland. The platform was almost empty. It was dimly lit. The air was cold and humid and the outside felt just like my insides - a damp, black nothingness.