Letters from the Heart (20 page)

O
kay,” Ms. O'Reilly said with a smile. “Who feels like going first? Ms. Rodriguez tells me you've done a fantastic job with your written reports, and she's joining us today to hear your presentations.”

It was Monday, and fourth-period social studies was devoted to the Heritage Museum project. Each day this week, kids would be taking turns reading their reports out loud and sharing some of the things they'd brought in from home.

“Remember,” Ms. O'Reilly added, “each of you has imagined this project a little differently, and that's part of the point. Our hope isn't to have twenty-one identical projects. Some of you have been researching topics related to your own family's history. Some of you have very personal objects to share, some have found cultural or historical artifacts.” She looked intently around the room. “Any takers for going first?”

Katani raised her hand. “I'll go first,” she volunteered.

Ms. O'Reilly was delighted. “Katani, why don't you come to the front of the room, and share what you have so far with the rest of us?”

Katani nodded. She walked gracefully up to the front of the room, leaning back against Ms. O'Reilly's desk and holding up a black-and-white photograph of what looked like a small church.

“Does anyone recognize this building?” she asked.

Nobody did.

Katani smiled. “Well, I didn't know it either, before I started working on this report. It's actually called the African Meeting House, and it's the oldest black church in Boston. It's on Beacon Hill, on a street called Smith Court, and you can still visit it today.”

Katani cleared her throat. “So, you're probably wondering what this Meeting House has to do with me. Well, I started doing my research by talking to my grandmother, Principal Fields.” She grinned. “I think you all know who she is…”

A few people laughed. Others just nodded.

“Well, she started to tell me a little bit about the history of education for African Americans here in Boston, and I decided that I wanted to learn more. So I guess my research is more…what Ms. Rodriguez said, more general, rather than being superpersonal.” Katani held up the picture again. “This church became a very important meeting place for African Americans in Boston in the nineteenth century. Lots of famous activists met there—including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth. It started to be called ‘The Abolitionist Church' because so many people who came there were fighting slavery.” Katani cleared her throat. “But the most interesting thing to me is that in 1835, a school was opened right next to this Meeting House, which was called the Abiel Smith School. It was one of the first black schools in Boston. So I guess I chose to bring in this photograph for two reasons. First, because I didn't know this building was right
here in Boston and how important it was for African Americans. And second, because the building became a symbol for the courage and determination of people who wanted education for themselves and their children.”

“Well done, Katani!” both Ms. O'Reilly and Ms. Rod riguez exclaimed.

Katani looked really proud.

“If I may interject, I like the way you wove your own personal history into something much wider,” Ms. Rod riguez added.

Charlotte offered to go next. She had brought in several objects to share: her vintage denim jacket, a brass pocket telescope, and a camera.

“The first object that I want to show is this old camera. It belonged to my great-grandfather Jonathan Ramsey. He moved to Massachusetts from Virginia with his family in the 1940s to be a newspaper photographer. Before that he was part of team of photographers who worked for the United States Farm Securities Administration during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Their assignment was to ‘introduce Americans to America.' Remember, at that time, we didn't have televisions yet, and some people didn't even have radio. My great-grandfather's job was to show how the Depression was affecting the lives of the Blue Ridge mountain people of Virginia.”

“This is one of his pictures.” Charlotte held up a black-and-white photo of a mountain family sitting on the porch of a dilapidated shack. The mother and the father looked really tired but the four children were smiling shyly. “My great-grandfather wrote a note on the back of this picture,” Charlotte added. “Hard-working, proud people. Their lives are difficult but they do not complain.”

Ms. O'Reilly walked to the front of the class and asked Charlotte if she could see the photograph. “People,” she said. “This is an important piece of documentary photography. Photographs like these highlighted the suffering and the joys of small-town and rural America during the Great Depression—the worst economic crisis this country has ever faced.

“Wonderful research, Charlotte. I am thrilled that you could share this with us,” she said to Charlotte.

Charlotte beamed. The next object that she held up was the denim jacket. “This was my mom's,” she said. Her voice caught a little, but she went on. “My mom died when I was four. She was a teacher and she loved to read poetry and dance to old-time rock and roll music. She loved this jacket and now it's my good-luck charm. I don't know if this jacket is really history, but I wear it whenever I feel like I need special inspiration.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment before Charlotte went on.

“And this,” she said, holding up the folding telescope, “belonged to my mother's father. Before I started talking to my dad, I didn't know that my grandfather loved astronomy too. He actually worked as a pharmacist, but he was really passionate about studying the stars. He always said that if he saved up enough money he wanted to go back to school. So I brought these three things in to show different things that have been really important in my family. What I learned is that some of the things I love most, my family did, too, and that they really connect me back to my parents and grandparents.”

“Nice work, Charlotte,” Ms. O'Reilly said approvingly. She turned to the class. “I especially like how very differently Katani and Charlotte handled this assignment. But you can
see how much thought and care both put into choosing what they wanted to study.”

One by one, other students shared artifacts and stories about their families. Isabel brought in a beautiful silver comb studded with turquoise that had belonged to her great-aunt. “My sister is starting to plan her Quinceañera,” she told the class. “That's a very special tradition in my heritage. It honors a girl when she turns fifteen. Elena Maria is going to wear this hair comb on that day. And two years from now, when it's my turn for my Quinceañera, I'll wear it too.”

Riley brought in some sheet music from a song that his father had written when he was in college. Samantha Simmons brought in a strand of pearls that had been handed down from one generation to the next in her family. She couldn't leave them because they were so precious, but she wanted everyone to see them. Before long, the Heritage Museum began to grow and grow. There were college pennants, suitcases, maps, photographs, and even a baseball bat, which Dillon brought in because he had a second cousin who played in the minor leagues.

Avery raised her hand. “I brought in three things from three different families,” she said.

Anna rolled her eyes. “This is all supposed to be about YOUR family,” she said. “Didn't you follow instructions?”

Avery gave her a look. “I did. It's just that I actually HAVE three families. My dad's family, my mom's, and my birth parents' family.” Ms. Rodriguez glared at Anna to be quiet. Anna shrugged her shoulders and turned around.

“Avery, come up and show us what you've brought in,” Ms. O'Reilly said encouragingly.

“I'll start with my dad. He's a mountain guy,” Avery said with a grin. “Loves mountains: biking, snowboarding, skiing.
You name it. He lives in Colorado and he's the one who taught me how to snowboard. So I brought in a picture of where he lives. It's called Telluride, and it's totally awesome. But it turns out that my dad's dad also loved mountains. He used to climb them, not slide down them—but I think it's all part of the same thing.” Avery shrugged. “The second thing I brought in is from my birth parents. It's called a
bojagi
. It's a special cloth used to carry things in Korea, and I found it when I was looking through some old stuff in the loft of my mom's carriage house. It's special to me because it came from them. But when I did research on it, it turns out that it's an important symbol. Some people say that it's a metaphor in Korean writing for something that holds a lot of stuff together in one place. Even though the pieces are different, it can still hold a lot. Like a family.”

Everyone was quiet again, even Anna. Avery cleared her throat. “The last thing that I brought in is to remind me of my mom.”

Avery took out a bottle of water and held it up.

Anna snickered, giving Joline one of her famous scornful looks.

“Anna,” Ms. O'Reilly said warningly. “Avery, can you tell us a little bit more about why you chose this?”

Avery nodded. “I found a quote,” she told the class, “that's about adoption. I really liked it, and it helped me to understand something amazing about my mom that I never really knew before.” She took out a piece of paper. “Here it goes: ‘A mother is like a mountain spring that nourishes the tree at the root. But one who mothers another's child is like a water that rises into a cloud and goes a long distance to nourish a lone tree in the desert.'”

“It's from something called
The Talmud
.” She shrugged,
folding the piece of paper again. “So that's why I brought in this bottle of water. My mom—she's like the water in here. She went a long way to find me. And I guess I'm kind of like that tree.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment. Then Maeve began to clap—quietly at first, and then louder and louder. Soon the whole class was clapping, even Anna and Joline. Avery shrugged, smiled, and sat down again.

“Maeve, how about you?” Ms. O'Reilly asked.

Maeve got slowly to her feet. “I'm still working on mine,” she said.

Anna snickered meanly and Maeve felt her face redden.

“Anna. I'm going to have to ask you to be considerate of your classmates, or step out into the hall until you CAN be,” Ms. O'Reilly said firmly.

Maeve took a deep breath. “I'm learning a lot of things about my family that I didn't know,” she said, ignoring Anna. “But I wanted to start with something I found that was written by my father's mother.” She held up one of her grandmother's letters for the class to see.

“For me, this assignment started one way and ended up another way.” Maeve cleared her throat. “To be honest, at first I thought it was just kind of…you know, boring.” A few people in the room chuckled. “But the more I thought about it, the more I found out that there was stuff I really wanted to know about…from people in my family who I'd never met…or who died before I was born. I found these letters that my grandmother wrote to my father before he started college. He saved them because they're all about life. How to be a good person. How to listen to yourself. My dad calls them ‘letters from the heart' because he says that's the way my grandmother was when she wrote them. It was like she was just pouring
herself out to him. So I brought this one in, and I wanted to include it because I think…” Maeve tried to find the perfect words. “Letters like this are like personal diaries. They tell us what kind of values people had, how they used words to express themselves, and what was important to them. I also have a playbill from the 1930s from a show called
No, No, Nanette
. My great-grandmother was a Broadway dancer. Back then people liked fun comedies with music and dancing. My grandmother told me that these types of shows helped people take their minds off all their money worries from the Great Depression. I think that if we're lucky, we can learn that kind of stuff from our families. Whoever our families are.”

She sat down, realizing then how much it had meant to her to be able to say this in front of the class. A few people turned around to smile at her, and Dillon gave her a big thumbs-up sign. Maeve settled back in her chair with a mixture of pride and relief. And Nana's letter took pride of place along with the other artifacts in the Heritage Museum. A hairclip. A letter. A pocket telescope. An old photograph. And a bottle of water. A stranger coming into the class would have no idea that these things could mean so much to the different people who had brought them in.

But maybe that was the point, Maeve thought. Maybe that was partly an answer to Ms. O'Reilly's question about history. History was what you kept, and the memories those things invoked. The things you carried. And the way that you carried those things—like the bojagi—gave that story its shape.

 

“It was so cool, Mom. You would've loved what Avery said.” Maeve was in the kitchen that night, helping her mother do the dishes and telling her about the class Heritage
Museum. Sam was in his room doing his homework, and it was just the two of them. But it didn't feel lonely or weird tonight. It felt kind of peaceful. Maeve sighed. She hadn't realized what a big deal it was for her to spend her first weekend at her dad's and come back again. She looked around the kitchen. Everything looked the same, but different. It was hard to believe that one day, she could feel as much at home at Dad's place as she did here. But Maeve saw now how that might be possible.

“Mom,” Maeve said, drying a plate. “What was it like when you and Daddy first met each other?”

“Wow, that was a long time ago,” Maeve's mother said with a smile. “We were both in high school then, can you believe it? I was only fifteen, not that much older than you are now.”

She was quiet for a minute, remembering. “Your dad was a few years older than I was. My mother wasn't that crazy about us dating, to tell you the truth. But Daddy and I persevered. We used to have so much fun together! We were really different in lots of ways. Dad was always much less worried than I was about day-to-day stuff like bills. He always had the sense that things would work out in the long run.” She smiled. “And you know what? He was usually right!”