Fast forward to the past

Can you visit the past while you're living your future? I do believe that's quite possible. It's exactly how I feel each time I travel to Cambridge and Boston.

As I stroll by every familiar place, it's like the ghosts of my past walk along with me, pointing in surprise at what's changed, and marveling in secret joy at those things that remain unaltered, even when it has been 30 years since I first arrived at its gates as a naive teenager of 16, and 23 years since I left Harvard for good as a savvy (if always hopeful) young woman.

While much of Harvard has completely altered after almost three decades (I actually cringed a little when I figured out it's been that long!), other things have stayed steadfastly the same, like the flower shop on Brattle Street, where I used to buy my belovedly fuzzy pussy willows and my gorgeously yellow forsythias (the latter of which I grow now in my garden).

As I strolled through the Yard this past weekend, I figured out why I'm so drawn to this place that I disliked so much for most of the four years that I was an undergraduate there. For better or worse, I grew up at Harvard. I spent some of my most formative years, between 17 and 24, from 1978 to 1985, walking and living and learning around the gates of Harvard.

I never did feel a part of Harvard, was always clearly an outsider there. And while the college's unwritten philosophy back then was to push you into the pool, so to speak, and watch while you either sank or swam, I did learn to swim (both figuratively and literally) at Harvard. And, more importantly, I learned to swim with sharks. That's an invaluable skill, and it has served me well all these 20-odd years.

Thus, I find myself loving the place more now that it's well in the past, and I can enjoy it safely from the future, than I ever did when it was my present. I often compare the caring and mentoring and the time that we, as teachers, invest in our students at my small college on the hill with my experience at Harvard, and the difference is at least twice the distance between the Earth and the next galaxy.

But I don't regret ever going to Harvard. It made me who I am, and with a few improvements here and there, I wouldn't change that either. Thus, I will continue to cherish my visits to Cambridge and Boston, especially now that I understand the nature of my love for this place.

During this visit I got a special treat because I reconnected with a good friend, who taught me a lot not just about journalism when we both worked at the same newspaper and she was my boss. She also taught me the essentials of what it means to be a good manager, a good leader of people (especially very difficult people!). Not that I am, by any means, either one of those, but I had a great teacher in her, and I have always been able to distinguish the good ones from the bad ones thanks to that. I've tried to model myself after her, as well.

Both our lives are radically different now, compared to back then. She is a wife and the mother of a lovely boy with a great smile and disposition. But she still has the same wonderful spark of intelligence and humor, and the same breadth of knowledge and intellectual curiosity that drew us together first as coworkers and then as friends. And while long distances and 8 years had passed since we last saw each other, we reconnected easily, like good friends do. It was as if we'd only said goodbye the day before, expecting that we'd see each other again soon, like in the old days.

Before meeting up with my old friend, I spent long hours at the Houghton Library, poring over the tiny handwriting of nineteenth-century journals, letters and a lecture written by two brothers who lived in Puerto Rico in the 1830s. As I've mentioned here before, there is no better time traveling machine than archival work.

Through their letters, I transported myself to the Puerto Rico of the 1830s, which seems eerily similar to the Puerto Rico of today. Strolling through Cambridge, and later, with my friend, walking through the busy streets of Boston, I also was transported to the past.

What I realized, ultimately, is that I've made peace with the bad (of which there was a good share), so that only the best shines through, and makes me love the place and its ghostly memories all the more.