Kinship Project Poem

A Brief History of Time

by Ayelet Schrek

It’s in the 1890s. My great-grandfather, Chiam Schrek, sits down to a purposely decimated meal after a long day of work for his aunt, reminiscing about the days when his parents were still alive, and dreaming of freedom with the hope and innocence of his youth.

Poland, 1900s. Fear, hatred, Jewish is a dirty word. Got to get out.

1903. He sees the Statue of Liberty. She smiles down at him, and he smiles back, the first time in a while. A wife, kids—three, a job as a tailor.

The Spanish Influenza of 1919. Tears pour silently down his face as he buries his wife and his oldest son, Frank.

He sends for his niece in 1920s, and she leaves Warsaw to help him with the kids. They fall in love and marry.

More kids, first Doris, and than Harold Frank Schrek, Frank, my grandpa, or as I call him, my papa.

The war. The Holocaust. What’s it like, I wonder, to have everyone you know, everyone you love murdered while the world stands blindly by? I can’t even imagine. But there is new love, when Frank and Harlene meet at a beach in New York.

1957, in Passaic, New Jersey, my dad is born. Not so far away, in the neighboring state of New York, Franks and Harlene are bound together in holy matrimony, him with his dark hair and glasses, her with a bright smile and a flowing gown.

Not long after, in 1962, they celebrate the birth of their first child, Adrian, plain but bright eyed, and then, four years later, their second, another girl, Haley, the cute one, the trouble maker.

They move from their beloved, two-family home in Brooklyn, which they shared with Frank’s sister, her husband and two daughters, and move to Rockland County. My mom absolutely despises it, and she begins to compete for the role of Trouble Maker, so her parents send her off to sleep away camp, where she has the time of her life.

Mom and dad meet at the daycare center at which they both work. Sparks fly, both of anger and passion, but nevertheless…

5 years later they are married. Another five years, and on April 11th, 1995, Anna Worton Schrek is born. She is very sick, and when they try to kick her parents out of the hospital, (rules are rules), they refuse ardently, sleeping on the floor to stay with the newborn.

Almost fourteen years later, that little baby Anna, who now goes by Ayelet, is typing out the words to a family history poem for English class, her nails two shades of purple, one hand striped, the other polka-dotted, listening to the song Sleep by Imogen Heap. She smiles as she sings along to the soft lyrics, her eyes flick up to the clock on the computer screen—how did it get to be so late?—and she continues to type, her hands flowing effortlessly over the keys. There, done. She smiles again, a grin of anticipation. So what’s next?