“I’m just so totally confused,” I said to my father. It was 1967 and I was home from my first year of college for Christmas break. I had been taking some intense courses in philosophy and in psychology and the ideas I encountered sent me into a mental vortex. I continued, “There’s so much pain and grief in the world and I know that I’m just one person. Why would I bother doing anything about it? It just doesn’t matter.” We were in our living room in apartment 6L in the New York City community we had lived in for the past seven years. The sky was the same gray as the concrete of the sidewalk below, the freezing temperature was reflected in the coat-bundled crowds rushing from one street to the next. When it started to sleet I felt that the universe itself was a metaphor for my dark mood.
Our doorbell rang. It was Mrs. Schneider from apartment 4E. “Oh, Sylvia it’s so wonderful to see you!” she exclaimed as I opened the door. “Here is something for you. I just baked it this morning.” She smiled and hugged me as she handed me a cloth-wrapped challah bread. “Hirshie helped me make this.” I thanked her and asked how Hirshie, her son, was doing. “Oh, he’s a fine boy you know. We are helping him as much as we can at home now. But he says we’re not as good as Miss Sylvia,” she chuckled. I laughed and said, “Well, please tell him that I’ll stop by to see him in a few days and that I have a new cross-word puzzle I made for him.” Then she left. “Where did that come from?” my father asked as he watched me put the bread on our kitchen counter. I explained. He nodded in recognition, “Wasn’t he the boy you tutored for several years? The one who the school said was unteachable?” Indeed, he was. Six years earlier when he was 6, the public school had said they were not able to keep him in class. He was disruptive and his behavior was so abnormal that he was expelled from first grade. His mother didn’t know what to do. I saw her carrying satchels of groceries in the elevator the day after his expulsion and she was crying. I got off at her floor with her as she explained the situation. “I don’t know what to do,” she continued in her thick Polish accent. “Max and me, we came to this country with nothing and we work so hard. I just want my little Hirshie to have a chance at life better than ours.” By now we were at her door. I helped her with her bags and met her rambunctious, curly-haired son. He tried to pull me down and then, unsuccessful, he started yelling at me. His words were only half comprehensible and when I didn’t respond, he hit my leg. His mother was horrified and admonished him in Polish. I recognized something in his scared and angry eyes—something I understood. Grabbing his small hand, I sat down on the floor with him and took an apple out of the grocery bag I was holding. “Say it, Hirchie—say A-p-el—” I demanded, sounding out the fruit’s name. At first he looked away, but I turned his face to look at mine. “In English. Say A-p-el.” I gently moved his mouth. When he said the word clearly, I clapped. We three smiled. Then I asked Mrs. Schneider to say the word in Polish, which to me sounded like “yabuko” and to tell him it was Polish. And so we began. It became more and more clear that Hishie was trying to combine the two languages he heard daily and with a young child’s frustration at not being understood, he lashed out in anger. I remembered learning English myself at that very age. Until I went off to boarding prep-school a few years later, I visited with Hirshie several times a week. I went with Mrs. Schneider to talk to the principal and help explain the situation. “Aha,” Mr. Wagner exclaimed. “Why, we should have figured that out. I am so sorry for this,” he continued. “I promise we will help him.” And they did. Every time I was home for school vacations I would stop in to see him or take him to the playground. By the time I went off to college in the fall of 1967 he was entering 8th grade and thriving. And now, this bleak winter day in 1967 as my father and I pulled apart the newly baked challah bread and smothered each slice with butter, he addressed my life-questions. “So, there’s too much pain in the world. You’re absolutely right, my daughter, there is. There is harshness and cruelty, and indifference, and down-right inhumanity.” We each took giant bites of the bread feeling its almost-sweetness and eggy richness. Then he continued, “What then should we each do? Do we do nothing? Maybe it feels like very little when you do something. Like with Hirshie. He’s just one boy. Why did you help him?” I thought about this and answered, “Because I had to. He was suffering, and his parents were suffering. Something needed to be done and I found a way to help. But it wasn’t hard. I didn’t sacrifice. And it was so little. There are such big things in the world that need help and I feel like it’s impossible.” My father put down his bread and took my hand, “You opened a whole world to him and his family. You gave him the whole world by your actions. It’s what we can all do. One person at a time. It’s what we’re meant to do, one action at a time. That’s how we help the world.” In 1971, after I graduated from college, after I moved to Maryland, and after I began my teaching career, Mrs. Schneider enrolled in adult education courses. A few years later she became an elementary school teacher specializing in students who needed to learn in an English as a second language class. Hirshie went on to become a bio-chemist and he has helped to bring life-saving vaccines, one shot at a time—one person at a time, into the world. Comments are closed.
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