This is Part III of My Mother Was A Mail-Order Bride. You can find Part I here and Part II here. 

He arrived to Lithuania in a fashionable but very thin coat. It was February, one of the coldest and miserable months in Lithuania. He chose to travel in the off-season to save some money on air tickets. He paid for it dearly, freezing in his fashionable American coat; taking baths in a cold bathroom with almost no heating because Lithuania was going through such troubled economic times; walking in an ice storm to an organ music concert, and falling on(…)

This is Part II of My Mother Was a Mail-Order Bride. 

Financially it did not cost us anything. Emotionally we were a nervous wreck.

The agency printed my mom’s picture and her short bio in a paper catalog. There was no Internet back then in Lithuania. All correspondence was done the old-fashioned way, through the mail.

The cost of services was passed to the American men. There was no sign-up fee, but men did have to pay $5 for each woman’s address they were interested in communicating to.

Women, most of the time, stayed on their own turf, and never traveled to meet their(…)

People often ask me how I came to the United States. Sometimes they give me an unpleasant smirk, wink at Beaker, my American husband, and say nothing but imply a lot. Sometimes they go as far as measure me up and down, and blatantly ask me if I was a mail-order bride. In response, I always force myself to smile and politely say that no, I was not a mail-order bride. Most of the time I suppress a really strong urge to say something mean and nasty.

But I am a polite person, generally, and I keep my mouth shut. When(…)