Aditi Chodavarapu ‘28 

REPORTER

Dear Summer,

While I’m no Belly Conklin, I really do love you. Your blue-skied mornings stretch into starry nights filled with fireworks and crickets. I can still remember the sound of that last dismissal bell, and its ringing chimed like music. Reverberating through the school, there was a steady stream of children pouring out the school doors and onto the buses just thinking of the endless possibilities that lay ahead.

I used to spend the days exploring the neighborhood with friends; the spokes of my bike spinning faster than the time which I thought had stopped ticking. I played sports, swam in pools, waded through lakes, walked to the nearby farm for ice cream, ding-dong-ditched the bricked house of the grumpy old lady who was always yelling at us, and hid from the seeker until the sunset. My poor mother --how many times had she seen me walk in with messy hair, sticky fingers, mud-spattered shoes, grass stains on my clothes, and the biggest grin on my face?

And the beach! The beach was the highlight of my summers. If I close my eyes hard enough, I can smell the salty air, hear the sound of water crashing against the ground, and immerse my toes in the tickling sand. I could be anything. From knights guarding solid fortresses against the incoming flowing enemy to a marine expert-paleontologist combo searching for the ever-elusive Megalodon tooth.

I was a queen, ruling over a sandy realm filled with castles. I was a mermaid, diving below the waves in search of my lost aquatic kingdom.

I was free of worries. Untroubled. Free-spirited. I saw the world as mine for the taking. But in the past year or so, I felt this sense of freedom slowly slipping away, and I found myself grasping onto those carefree memories I took for granted. SAT prep, college applications, AP classes, essays, and tests plague my mind, constantly reminding me of their inevitability.

I realized I was afraid. Afraid that the summer dust that once accumulated on my alarm clock would now be wiped away. Afraid that my screen time might be higher than the time I spend outside. Afraid to lose something I’ve always had. I was afraid that I'd only realized to cherish it after it was behind me.

I now find myself longing for the simplicity of childhood summers, when my biggest worry was to have a chocolate or a strawberry popsicle.

So, dear summer, I beg of you; let me hold on to this feeling a bit longer. Let me bask in the organized chaos, the absence of obligations and responsibilities. Let me blissfully exist in this time-stopping illusion where I stay young forever. Let the fireworks be louder, the stars brighter, the ice cream sweeter.

Let me have this one thing to myself, if only for just a little while longer.

Yours Truly,

Aditi