A long time ago in a country far, far away…

Early twentieth century Russia.  A young boy has many difficulties to endure in his life.  His parents have split up, his frigid mother leaving him and his brother in the custody of his father.  Subsequently, she leaves the country.  Then his father is killed while serving in the army.  The brothers are to live with an uncle on a farm.  But the young boy leaves, becoming a street urchin, selling newspapers on the train.  At a certain point he falls from a train, losing half a finger in the process.  He becomes hardened with the cold realities of living.
A concerned grandmother begins a search for her two grandsons.  Finally, they are located and then the 2 brothers are taken to America.  A new chapter in their lives begins.

But it is not always an easy life.  And it is not easy to forget the difficulties of the past.

Several years pass.  The boy becomes a man and meets a young woman.  Subsequently, they marry and have three children, a boy and two girls.

Over the years, their youngest child, one of the girls, observes that her life-hardened father treats her mother in a harsh manner.  Viewing this continuing course of conduct, the girl becomes concerned.  It will not be this way when it is her time to marry.

Subsequently, the girl does marry, at the age of 18.  She has been employed as a buyer at Kresge, later to be known as K-Mart.  She enjoys her work.

But by age 19, she is a mother.  And in the coming years, there will be 4 more children.  It will never be easy.

And she is determined to avoid the harshness that her father directed toward her mother.  And so she does.  But it is replaced with a hair-trigger anger, directed not only at her husband, but also at her 5 children.  Perhaps, this is due in part, to finding herself a mother at such a young age.  

And her husband, having suffered with frigid parents of his own, accepts the many outbursts produced by his wife’s anger without complaint.  And apparently, his failure to respond to his wife’s anger, adds more fuel to her fire.  He is weak.  In fact, he mirrors her quick anger towards the children, if not all of the coming violence.

And the violence came.  It came in many forms.  It came in the form of beatings with an ancient commercial rolling pin.  It came in the form of hair being pulled.  It came in the form of fingernails being dug into a child’s flesh until blood flowed.  It came in the form of the sweeping of an arm, clearing a child’s bedroom shelves of all his precious possessions.

And the husband mirrored some of this behavior too, to a lesser degree.

And even when there wasn’t the violence, there was always an uneasiness because of the near-constant anger and outbursts.

And the five children grew, the anger effecting them in various ways.  Some handled it relatively well, others to a lesser degree.

Eventually, the five offspring became parents of their own children.  And guarding against the cycle of anger required a near-constant vigilance.