I closed the last blue exam book of my time at Harvard, placed it on my professor’s desk, smiled at him saying “thank you” softly, and left. Sever Hall smelled musty as always. The oversized wood doors of this ancient looking brick fortress made noble entrances to every room and stairwell. As I stomped down the iron staircase, my boots made the old metal sing. This building was a monument to the old fashioned way of learning: acquiring knowledge for the love of it.
Five years of hard work were now behind me. I had loved it all. It was winter twilight. Deep snow covered everything except the stairs and walkways. A former Boston street kid, granddaughter of immigrants, daughter of a real pickle man, I crossed Harvard Yard.
I found my favorite sitting spot. The gray concrete slab under a huge tree was the length of a bench, backless, and high enough to sit on. The wind grew stronger. I sat down on my old friend, and let my thoughts, as I had done so often here, wander and see where they would take me.
Students were all around, but I knew no one. My children were young and I had commuter student loneliness. But the air was delicious, clean and arctic, and I pushed the isolation away. I’d just become a part of Harvard’s history and this was my own quiet celebration.
People in heavy coats rushed past me, crunching snow and ice. I was the only person sitting anywhere and must have looked odd, but it felt right. I waited, prolonging that milestone moment, shivering, and rooted like the tree next to me. I could have frozen to death so deep were my thoughts. Images and words I grew up with came to my awareness suddenly, although they had always been there.
I grew up in an old brown wood Boston triple-decker house. My parents, brother, and I lived on the first floor. My mother’s parents, my Mama and Papa who owned the house, lived on the second floor, and the third floor was rented out. On that freezing day of my last day at Harvard, my home was a large brick Georgian colonial house in an upscale suburb, but my heart was in my old Boston neighborhood.
My Papa was the oldest of eight children. He left Lithuania when he was thirteen years old because it was too dangerous for a Jewish boy of that age to remain there; he would have been stolen by soldiers for the army. He came to America by himself and worked for years as a bricklayer to bring his younger brothers and sisters to safety. Finally, when the last of their children were safe in America, my Papa’s parents consented to follow them. But my great grandfather, Avraham, developed the dreaded eye infection that meant deportation at Ellis Island in those days. He wanted Chaya, my great grandmother, to go without him. She loved her husband and refused to leave.
Clouds passed over the moon as I remembered my mother telling the story again and again, of how the family gathered when she was a young girl, while a neighbor translated a letter written in Yiddish addressed to my Papa: Jacob Shapiro, Boston, America. It reported there had been a pogrom. My Papa’s parents were herded onto a cattle train with the entire village, and sent north because they were Jews. The writer, their neighbor, witnessed their deaths from starvation and cold. The train stopped, and soldiers threw their bodies into a field
Tears froze on my face. That sorrow was a part of me, even at times of joy. Softly I spoke to the sky, “My beloved great grandparents, know that your family is safe now. I have just finished Harvard University and I dedicate this achievement to you both. Rest, be at peace. I love you.”
I stood up feeling the blessings of my ancestors and walked slowly to my car, stiff from sitting so long on concrete on a cold night.
