BRATTLEBORO — It was 1942. My father joined the Navy and moved my mother, my sister, and me from New Jersey to Rhode Island to be near my mother's family.
All I knew was that everything I knew simply disappeared: friends, school, playground, and neighborhood.
I have a vivid memory of walking into a new school, staring with my scared eyes at a blackboard filled with gibberish. New Jersey schools did not, at the time, teach cursive to second-grade beginners.
And my father disappeared. I had a recurrent dream for years of running, running from some advancing menace.
This is what World War II was to a child.
I suppose these memories are why the plight of Syrian refugees tugs at my heart.
I know my experiences are nowhere near their struggles. I had a place to go to that welcomed me. I can't imagine what it is like to leave everything one knows and have no place to go to begin again, where you don't know if family or friends are still alive.
I just know that all anyone is looking for is home.
Maybe Donald Trump can hide in his mansion, but those of us who remember immigrant parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents - and, maybe, who even visited the Statue of Liberty on a class trip - can only hope Americans will keep both their hearts and their borders open.