Author finds home, happiness in America

Three years ago, Anneros Valensi was approached with an idea by her writing teacher to write a memoir. 

Embarrassed, Valensi simply shrugged off that idea.

But after careful consideration, Valensi thought her story needed to be told. Fast-forward to today, and  “Where is Home?” tells the story of Valensi’s upbringing in post-war Germany. while “Finding Happiness in America” tackles the Riverdale resident’s transitioning to adult life in New York.

“I wanted to show that my life was not easy,” Valensi said. “But I was able to make my life better. I tried to fulfill my dreams.”

Born in 1938, Valensi’s earliest memories involve the years after the fall of the Nazi regime in World War II. But even though Hitler was gone, life in East Germany was anything but easy. Not only did her family suffer through poverty, but they also had to live under Russian occupation beginning in 1945.

“The bathroom was not usable,” Valensi said. “The toilet was badly blocked, the tube covered with feces. There was little food, no more grocery store, no butcher. People who still had money bought meat, eggs and grain from farmers through the black market, since the Russians had claimed everything.”

Valensi also recounts the constant moving from place to place, which had a profound impact on her life.

“We were pushed around and put into trains all over Germany because nobody knew what to do with us,” she said. “Nobody cared about us because we did not have a home. We always lived in fear because there was no home, there was nowhere where I belonged.”

Without any sense of permanency, Valensi could not wait until the day she turned 18 so she could finally leave East Germany once and for all. There was just one problem, however: Valensi had nowhere to go.

It wasn’t until she was 22 that Valensi finally left, relocating to London to work as an au pair.

“I was driven to find a place on Earth where I felt comfortable,” Valensi said. “I wanted to have that feeling where you get to go home.” 

London, however, did not fulfill that feeling. Valensi was still searching for that home when she made her way across the Atlantic to a rather unlikely place — Kansas City. And that’s where her second memoir, “Finding Happiness in America,” begins.

It was there, in 1966, Valensi trained to become a flight attendant. Afterward, she relocated to New York where her life would forever change.

Valensi quickly started to meet new people. One of them happened to later become the love of her life, Quentin. Falling in love with Quentin, Valensi said, finally filled that emptiness in her life.

“He made me whole, because he gave me the home that I never had,” Valencia said. “There was no family when I left, so he was my family.”

Valensi was confident she found the one, so confident she married Quentin only three months after meeting him.

“Quentin came home wearing the biggest smile ever,” Valensi wrote in her book. “He could hardly wait to slip this precious ring on my finger. Now we were officially engaged. I could not stop staring at my hand. I will never forget the feeling, the shock-like realization that I should be wearing such a treasure. 

“Every time I saw the glitter on my finger, my heart jumped a beat.”

Her marriage was just the beginning. Valensi and Quentin went on to have two children — her son Jean-Paul, and her daughter Vanessa. She then followed that up by working in retail, eventually opening up her own boutique store.  

Valensi certainly came a long way from her days riding the train in East Germany. She was able to find the one thing that she so desperately tried to seek … a home.

“I tried to fulfill my dreams, but in order to do that, you have to do something,” Valensi said. “It doesn’t just happen. And that is what I wanted to show in my book.”