I grew up in the summer.

Everything I did and learned during the school year was all well and good, but in the three hottest months of the year, I became who I am. At 5 years old, I walked over to the park by my nana’s house with my sister and cousins. For years they’d been attending the free summer playground program, where counselors and their volunteers spent their summer playing games and and creating a fun atmosphere for the kids of Beverly. I had been too young to go, and at five I was still one year away, but still, I was shipped off with the crew. This is the first summer I remember.

For the next seven years, this was my life. Every May when the snow was melted and heat crept in, we’d count the days until park started again. We strategized about who our counselors this summer would be, and how we would prove to them that we ruled the park. Once park started, the marathon began. We’d spend hours creating alliances in dodgeball, and practicing our poker faces during games of Mafia and Black Magic. We’d make the best of every situation. Torrential rain? Sure, lets make a water park out of the play structure. A hawk stole one kid’s action figure? Let’s make him our park mascot, Hawkman. We’d create these personalities, these realities that anyone who didn’t go to a Bev Rec program just wouldn’t understand.

One thing especially: Lip Sync. As a wise sensei once said on the topic of Lip Sync, “Love plus hate equals obsession." Oh how true. As soon as the weeks drew closer to the best night of the year, parks and camps across Beverly would begin the grueling hard work of creating a visual masterpiece to be remembered for ages. Whether it was a Oompa-Loompa and Willy Wonka extravaganza or a musical medley of Queen songs, we put our hearts and souls into the choreography, the props and the costumes until it all came down to one night. And whether we won or lost (which was mostly what happened), we set out with a vision for victory next summer.

As the weeks drew to a close and kids across the city were haunted by back to school ads and unfinished summer reading, we were able to hold onto the last precious days of freedom, playing woodchips, kickball and zombie tag with our summer family who, pretty soon, we wouldn't see for a whole other year. And then as soon as we were back sitting in those school desks in September, we’d already be dreaming about next summer.

I lived that carefree lifestyle for several summers. Days of park games and afternoons in the pool. And once I got too old to actually be in the program, I did what many other park rats did: I became a counselor. With the motto “For The Kids," I got to see so many kids have the best summer ever. Like the girl whose family was in India and didn’t know much about life here, but did know how to have a great time at park. Or the kids from the poorer areas who, for four hours a day, got have fun like every other kid in Beverly. And the kids like me, who really lived for park and just wanted to be as wacky and weird as their counselors.

Sometimes though, that "For The Kids” motto really got the best of us: Those days when all the kids complained of being hot and sweaty on a 90-degree day (So am I!), or when you stayed up way too late to work on props; Those times you really didn’t want to go in the mudpit, but your kids begged. And during lip sync week, when sleep is a minimum and stress is a maximum, you wonder if any of this is worth it. But, when you see the excitement in their eyes right after performing, hold that first place award after a marathon of a day and you feel the same gloomy feeling of summer ending as they do, it’ll all be worth it.

I hadn’t intended for last summer to be my final as a counselor in the Bev Rec program. I didn’t think it was my last summer making my park Bikini Bottom as an Olympic Country, or dressing as X-Ray from "Holes" on a special event. I didn’t know it’d be the last time I be hanging with some of my best friends every day, doing trivia on Wednesday nights and venting about stressful kids on Friday afternoons. I cherish my memories and lessons learned from all my years at park, as a kid and as a counselor. But I’m not that 5-year-old carefree kid anymore, and you get opportunities somewhere else that you just have to take. And then it’s time to move on. And as Robert Frost’s famous poem says:

"So dawn goes down to day. / Nothing gold can stay."

Stay gold Bev Rec.