Marching season is out, but the competition is only heating up.
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Section leader applications for the next marching band season at Halston University are officially open, and percussionist Bay Rodriguez wants the role.
Bay's only competition is Ca...
adverb. marching command; stand relaxed, with the right foot in place.
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I LOVE SUMMERS IN CARSONVILLE.
I didn't always, but I do now. By the time I graduated high school, I was so eager to get out of my hometown. I thought it was too quiet and too repressive.
After sophomore year of college, the more I settled into adulthood and studying, the more I appreciated the little things; all the familiar faces running the main street stores, the way I'm not worried about petty crime in such a suburban locale, the unhurried pace in our family home, the way Haywood Park always looks the same.
Absence, fond hearts, et cetera.
Mom and Dad are a very conventional married couple. They're not super in love anymore but I know they still love each other. Sometimes Dad will try to hug Mom and kiss her but she'll shoo him away and scold, "Not in front of the boys." Other times he'll succeed and, even if we're all eating breakfast in the kitchen, she'll turn her back to us, grab his cheeks, and give him a quick peck. I think their romance takes a back seat to the realities of raising a family.
Both my parents are anxious types. I have two theories: either their anxiety comes from their work, which necessitates paying attention to current events and wider society, which as of this century is majorly depressing and anxiety-inducing; or they've always been perceptive, anxious, detail-oriented overthinkers and ended up predisposed to succeed in the jobs they currently hold.
Dad, a bank manager, worries about the economy and inflation and school shootings; Mom, a middle-ranking executive for local radio, worries about Christian, my thirteen-year-old brother, mainly. As someone needing to track the media preferences of the general public, Mom's picked up an alarming amount of youth vernacular. She now asks for a 'vibe check' by way of requesting a mother-son one-on-one. Despite fervently begging her to abandon trying to sound like TikTokker, she won't stop.
It's a month into summer when I take Christian to the beach.
He loves to swim, and he can hold his own in the water, but for a range of health reasons I need to accompany him all the time. Today's summer sky is so blue it nearly hurts to stare up at it, with no clouds. Despite the brightness, the water is still cold—a staple of our stretch of Massachusetts coast.
Christian and I stay in the shallows, splashing, star-fishing, soaking in the salt. He's just graduated from middle school, the same one I went to, and is in line to start at the public Carsonville High School in September. I went to the Academy, a private boarding school, headhunted when I was his age for musical and academic talent. But the public system will give Christian an Individualized Education Program and transition support after he graduates. Also, people are assholes at the Academy. Decision made.
