Exploring Harvard and the Journey of Life Choices

The Granary Burying Ground in Boston shone in the morning light. Maple trees festooned in orange and red October finery cast gentle shadows where gravestones leaned at an angle after over two centuries of weathering the ravages of underground springs and harsh New England winters. There was John Hancock’s gravesite, and farther along the pathway, the gray, unassuming headstone of Samuel Adams, two dead icons who belong to history. As I wandered about the burial ground, I thought about my place in this life, the differences I had made and would hopefully make before I die.

The day before, my son Daniel and I toured Harvard University. I grew up in a house where the Ivy League was venerated—almost worshipped. My father, an academician and intellect, kept a library stocked with the complete works of Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Hemingway, and Faulkner. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, he held the Ivy League up as the ultimate in education. I attended a small Methodist college in upstate Pennsylvania, which wasn’t very exciting, before transferring to American University in Washington, DC, in my junior year.

After college, Dad urged me to attend Penn for a graduate degree in education, but it felt more like a commuter school than a place where I truly felt part of the campus or student body since I drove in every day from the suburbs to attend classes. Now, here I was, walking through Harvard Yard with its stately brick buildings, students wearing headphones and backpacks, chatting in small groups, and bicycling to classes. The place hummed with the ghosts of John F. Kennedy, FDR, and Helen Keller (she went to Radcliffe) and the likes of a young Barack Obama. There were Harvard dropouts there, too…Matt Damon, who wrote Good Will Hunting, one of my favorite movies, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. And Robert Frost.

Daniel and I walked up the steps of the massive brick building with imposing limestone pillars, which is Widener Library. We went inside and read the inscription there. “My father always said we were the same family, just not the rich Weideners,” I said to Daniel, noting the slightly different spelling of the two ‘e’s versus the 3 ‘e’s in my last name. “Ours was the real German spelling, as Dad used to say,” I told my son.

Would my life have been different, more successful, more fulfilling, if I had attended Harvard, I thought, where the world was yours for the taking. Where it seemed everyone was on the fast track to fame and fortune. Now, in my 70s, my youth long evaporated, I wondered: What opportunities had I missed that would never come again? And would it have mattered? And in my mind, was I still being influenced by Dad, who had been dead for 30 years?

How quickly I had gone from a young woman to the many roles I would end up playing in my life. Wife and mother, daughter tending her mother in her final years, journalist, author, and writing teacher. I hoped I had made a difference.

As I walked the Harvard campus, I saw in those young people a mirror of my own youthful reflection. Expectation and thrill of the limitless possibilities of youth in a vibrant place. That night, I saw students dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos, walking arm in arm under the glow of street lamps, illuminating gold elm trees on a balmy October night. Where were they going? What surprises awaited them?

I longed to be young again until I remembered John. I met him when I was twenty-six. If I went back in time, I might never have seen him standing under those white dogwood trees one May afternoon, as the confluence of events in that moment led me to him. Or held close in memory that night under October skies when we first held our older son, Alex…or the September afternoon when Daniel was born four years later. A once-in-a-lifetime journey built on chance and serendipity, and now, Daniel is on this trip with me.

A neighbor recently said to me, “I have one word to describe you.” I was curious. “What is that?” I asked. “Authentic,” he said. “You are an authentic lady.” I smiled, thanked him, and we hugged. I didn’t have to attend Harvard, after all.

There is no going back. There never will be, not for me, not for Adams, or Hancock, not for any of us. All we can do is live this life, embrace our choices, remain curious about myriad possibilities, and hopefully, live to the fullest until the end and our final resting place.

Author’s Note: Our Women’s Writing Circle prompt this month was to write a reflective essay. The above essay is mine, attempting to reflect on an incident or moment in time and the lesson learned. Have you tried writing a reflective essay?