Growing up in Chicago
-naseem rakha 7 April 2023
So I am in Chicago.
This is where I was born. This is where I had a childhood filled with freedom, running around with my best friend Billy pretending we were astronauts when the Apollo missions reached for the moon, and geologists when we would collect rocks from Lake Michigan, and entomologists running around with our butterfly nets and jars with cotton balls dunked in formaldehyde. We lived in the biggest post-war urban renewal project in Chicago, five apartment buildings set on 100 acres of grass and trees and parks, each apartment with a balcony and views of the lake and The Loop and the rising and setting sun.
Our pre-school was located on the first floor of one of those apartments, and our finger paintings hung in Chicago’s Art Institute. For a week Ella Jenkins, a famous folk singer, taught us to sing several songs, then brought us to a recording studio to cut two albums. At one point she called me out by name and asked me to sing “It’s the Milkman” in my funny high pitched voice. I had a funny high pitched voice back then.
