I love summer. I don’t enjoy the weather, necessarily, because down South it gets really hot, and I’m talking, you can fry an egg on the sidewalk kind of hot. I love the prevalence of things to do during the summer. There are a lot of things for kids to do, and I remember going to summer programs was a great investment of time and money for my parents. I remember going to summer school when I was in elementary school and taking a class where we learned about multimedia. I also remember taking a Spanish class where we had a cool teacher named Ms. Basdeo, and she would sing songs with us in Spanish. One of them was “Willaby Wallaby we, a elefante setse do en mi. Willaby Wallaby,” and then we had to go around and sing “[insert name] got sat on by the elephant” in Spanish. I think one of my favorite parts of the summer programs was going to the vending machine and getting those Cookies n Cream ice cream cones. My least favorite was riding the bus to the program because I was shy and quiet, and had difficulty being comfortable around the other kids because they seemed to be more outgoing than me. I really enjoyed art class, though, because I love creating things. It was nice to sit in the class and draw and paint and sculpt things. I remember sitting with some pretty nice people and would often give them my soy nuts and other snacks to munch on during class. They actually really liked the soy nuts; I didn’t think they would, but one of the girls at the table kept putting her hand out every time and so I would give her some of my soy nuts. I also loved the snacks they served at these enrichment programs; Cosmic Brownies was my jam, as were Little Debbie Zebra snack cakes. The sugary filling in the middle, and the softness and puffed-upness of these snack cakes was like being on Cloud Nine, I’m not kidding you. Even though I am vegan, I can still taste how good those Zebra Cakes were. Art class was one of my favorite things to do during the summer, because it gave me an outlet to express myself and it gave me something to do over those hot long months. I really liked one of the classes that I took because we got to have little indoor picnics where we had pieces of fruit with this creamy cheese that we spread on crackers. We were pretending like we were eating French food. I fell in love with that creamy cheese, and even though I can’t eat it anymore due to my lactose-intolerance, I can still imagine the creaminess of the cheese as I spread it on those crackers and ate it with those pieces of fruit. There was another art studio that was above the college preparatory summer school I ended up going to a few years later, and it was called The Artist Within. I sat with a small group of kids, and we just drew and ate snacks and listened to music. The kids were really nice, and they somehow embraced my quiet and sensitive personality. There was one girl named Rose who had a short blonde haircut and wore all black, and she was pretty cool. The art teacher was really sweet, too. She and I had some pretty good conversations. I vaguely remember one of the songs we listened to on that little radio was “Any Other Girl” by an artist named Nu. I didn’t know who the artist was at the time, but I just looked up based on the few song lyrics I remembered, and I got lucky because most times I hear a song, but I don’t know who the artist is.
As I got older, I started participating in more music programs. I still loved drawing, but by this point I had started playing the cello the summer before sixth grade and I fell in love with it. So, I attended a summer program at a university that was about an hour from where I lived that was for cello students in middle and high school. It was really fun getting to play with the other students. They offered a masterclass, which is a class where a faculty member has some students play for them and gives them feedback on what they did well and how they can do better. I didn’t know what to expect from a masterclass at first, and frankly it sounded intimidating. The word “masterclass” made me wonder if I needed to be an advanced student to be in the class. I don’t think I ended up participating in the master class, but I remember watching the older students perform and thinking, Wow, they’re so cool and mature! I want to play like them! Some of the tunes I remember playing was this piece called “Evening Prayer” and we had two really cool instructors named Louann and Andrew. Andrew was part of an ensemble of cellists called the 440 Alliance, and my parents and I went to see them play. They were really, really good and they played cello in this really cool way. They were rocking out together, and it was just a blast to watch!
One class I took over one of my summers (it was either fifth or sixth grade) was an improv class at a local university. As a quiet kid, it was really hard for me to fit in at first. I was so used to reading my book and not talking with other kids, and I was more accustomed to talking with adults than with the other kids. But looking back, I am glad I took that improv class because it helped me go outside my comfort zone. That’s not to say that right after taking the improv class, I stopped being introverted. But it helped to learn something new, something that I wasn’t used to doing. I remember being in that summer class and the kids were all super outgoing and talkative and I just wanted to crawl into a corner and read, but I couldn’t so I did my best, but I suffered from so much social embarrassment. I remember one time I had to get up with a couple of other students in the class, and we had to pick one or two other students to join us in an improv game. I was freaking out because everyone kept getting up when it came my turn to choose, and yelling, “PICK ME! NO, NO, PICK ME!” I desperately just wanted to hide in a corner, but I ended up making a decision and we played this game called The Party Game. I forgot what it entailed, but I somehow survived standing up there in front of a bunch of kids, worrying about how people were going to judge me. Like I said, I definitely needed to get out of my comfort zone.
Summers were also a really fun time to visit family. Summers in Chicago were a lot of fun because my family loved going to the movie theater. I would excitedly mark in my calendar the movies that were coming out and we would go as a family to see them. We were too young to watch any PG-13 or R-rated films, but we would see movies like Shrek or The Rugrats Go Wild, and we loved them. Fast forward, and in the summer of 2016, I am walking down the streets of Chicago to go to the Chicago Culture Center. However, at that moment I was no longer the carefree seven-year-old but now a 22-year-old college graduate with major depressive disorder and no plans for the future. I rode the L train to the center, determined to battle whatever inner turmoil was going on within me. I went to the center and furiously chanted the phrase Nam-myoho-renge-kyo over and over again. I wasn’t trying to work miracles at that moment. I was battling this fundamental inability to believe that my life was worth living, that I had a future full of possibilities and opportunities that I couldn’t even imagine. I was in a state of suffering, and I was determined more than ever that summer to claw myself out. After chanting, I felt so empowered to make efforts to transform my suffering and my state of life expanded. A few months later, I finally got the help that I needed, and was able to finally address that inner turmoil with a mental health professional. That moment during that summer of 2016 was a profound cause for me to transform my life on a deep, deep level.
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