UMass Magazine Online

Spring 2004

Departments

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Features

The Cosby Principle

The Wildest Place in Boston

Manhattan's Hottest Property

Setting the Record Straight

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Through my daughter's eyes

—Janine Roberts ’82 Ph.D.




	Natalya Roberts ’04, and her mom, Janine. (photo by Ben Barnhart)

ONE AFTERNOON I SLIPPED INTO Memorial Hall to hear a lecture on the difficulties and rewards of teaching in public schools. I glimpsed a tangle of red-brown curls a few rows ahead. Natalya, my daughter, was there, too, taking advantage of an extracurricular program.

I started at UMass as a graduate student and have taught in a graduate program here for 21 years. I thought I knew the campus well. But when my daughter enrolled four years ago I saw the university afresh.

Her first year, Natalya had small classes right in her dorm, including women’s studies. She interviewed her grandmother and me and traced her lineage from great-grandma Elma Laidley—youngest of 14 children in an Irish immigrant family born in Omeemee, Canada—to the present day. She learned that her great-grandmother was the first woman able to vote in the family and I was the first to have access to college.

Natalya’s Biology of Cancer and AIDS class gave her new expertise: she explained how the tamoxifen I took after my bout with breast cancer worked to block food for cancer cells. Natalya was just 13 when I was diagnosed. There was much we didn’t talk about then. Her class gave us a second chance, opening up conversations about my treatment, as well as lifestyle choices and her relationship to her body.

Sophomore year Natalya’s birthday was the day after she moved into the dorms. I stopped by with cake and flowers. A custodian—against the rules—let me into the building. Natalya told me later that the woman, who was struggling to know the other 850 students in the dorm, searched her out to wish her happy birthday. Countless acts like these touched my daughter. She knew people cared about her even at such a large university.

Natalya’s experiences reconnected me with my early memories of UMass. Natalya’s new boyfriend, Marc, worked at Earthfoods. I met her there for lunches—in the very same room in the Student Union where I had lunches when I was a grad student, when I was pregnant with her. Two decades later that room smelled the same, of creamed soups and roasted vegetables.

My professional community at UMass is in the School of Education. Having my daughter on campus bridged my home and work lives. My teaching was invigorated as I heard Natalya’s perspective on good professors—the ones who made a difference in the tender and fierce processes we call learning.

Last summer, my colleague Professor Trish Gillespie Silver, the innovative director of the Learning Disabilities Services for Students, passed away. She had come onto the campus the same year as me. Natalya was asked to play violin for Trish’s service.

Once more I sat with my daughter in Memorial Hall. Notes from Natalya’s violin climbed skyward, like wisteria reaching for sunshine at the first signs of spring.

Faces of people of many backgrounds softened the austere room. I looked out the windows at the heart of the campus, seeing it anew through my daughter’s experiences. Natalya graduates this spring. When she tells people about her time at UMass, her dark eyes flash.

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Through my daughter's eyes

My daughter's eyes: larger image