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Campus & Community
A look inside: Currier House
Five staff photographers will offer close-ups of the interests, activities, and personalities inside five Harvard Houses in installments over the course of the academic year. In the second of the series, Rose Lincoln visits Currier House, home of 10-year-old Mara.
When Mara Cavallaro started fifth grade last month, she titled her introductory essay, “Me as a House Master’s Daughter.” The first sentence said, ”I live in a Harvard residence in the middle of a quad which is already blooming with white and yellow flowers.”
Ten-year-old Mara, who has a pile of Mad Lib magazines and a blue beta fish named “Bloofey,” lives in Currier House in the Radcliffe Quad with her parents, Nadejda Marques, a research coordinator at the Harvard School of Public Health, and James Cavallaro, a clinical professor of law. Her parents are the interim Currier House masters.
Asked what she likes about living at Currier, Mara fires off a list: “I like the soft-serve machine, I like the quad, I like the Cabot House master’s daughter … I like the pool table, the ping pong table, the air hockey table, and the dining hall.”
Mara has two jobs at Currier. “I am the official Currier House event-poster-flier maker. I hang them too. I am also Patricia C. Machado’s assistant in I.D. swiping for … dining services. I get paid in brownies. They owe me six.”
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Currier kid Rose Lincoln/Staff Photographer
Currier kid
Mara Cavallaro’s parents, Nadejda Marques and Jim Cavallaro, are the Currier House masters.
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
Mara (middle) jumps rope outside her Currier House home with her mother, House master Nadejda Marques (right), and pal Autumn Galindo (left).
Hangin’ at Harvard
This is the life! Air hockey right in your front yard.
Open house
Mara (right) and Autumn hang fliers announcing the Currier House open house.
A few extra inches
Oh, to be tall! Mara (right) and Autumn put on a show with homemade stilts.
Trick, or treat?
Mara models her Wednesday Adams costume, which she is planning to wear on Halloween.
Play date
Mara (on right, in stockinged feet) and Mara’s mother (left) wait for Autumn’s mom to arrive.
Sad goodbye
Harvard Law School Clinical Professor of Law Jim Cavallaro, a House master at Currier House, walks Mara to the bus stop. On this morning, she’s unhappy because her father is leaving on a work-related trip.
Love you
Jim Cavallaro signs to his daughter Mara as she’s lifted to school and he departs on a business trip.
Babysitter’s club
Harvard student and Currier House resident Lindsey Brinton ’12 teaches Mara piano while babysitting her.
Dance, Mara, dance!
If you can dance, dance! Mara has the dance studio all to herself.
Storytime
Mara and her mother read Portuguese books to each other every night. They lived in Brazil until Mara was three.
