My Rock Star Moment

I have had very few occasions to feel like a rock star in my life. I did a little community theater in my youth, which is maybe the polar opposite of being a rock star, but still affords a bit of adulation, if only from relatives and senior citizens. 

When I dropped off my application to volunteer at International Institute, however, I had a bona fide Rock Star Moment.

Pam, the receptionist, was expecting me because I had called ahead. She had told me there was an immediate opening for a classroom assistant in an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) class on Mondays and Wednesdays, starting in just a few weeks, so I wanted to get my paperwork in and complete the background check as soon as possible. The summer was going to be my opportunity to generate material for the upcoming, and much-dreaded, Thesis Hours of fall semester. Interacting with lots of immigrants at the Institute seemed the perfect activity to spark page after page of interesting content. I felt this was my chance to turn the winter of discontent that was my Catholic Charities experience into a more glorious Spring, or Summer anyway, here at the Institute.

I smiled at the handful of Asian folks who stood in the shade of the tree near the steps of the Institute as I walked from the parking lot past the busy, noisy intersection in front of the building. The foyer was bustling, as usual, with adorable brown children in colorful t-shirts and sandals, their mothers in bright saris or wrap skirts topped with cheap nylon shirts. Everyone smiled at me in turn as I made eye contact and said hi; a short, dark-skinned gentleman of about fifty opened the glass door to the reception are for me and bowed slightly when I thanked him. At the desk (which is really just a wood counter with a mesh in-box for mail on top and decals pasted on it advertising the immigration process in glossy red, white and blue print), I met Pam, a short, stocky, pleasant woman with mousy hair and a melodic voice. She immediately started detailing how the ESOL class works, when it meets, that Susan is the teacher and she'll be up here in a few minutes if I'd like to wait to meet her, and didn't even seem interested in taking my application. This was SO different from Catholic Charities, I thought to myself, where paperwork was of utmost importance and actually doing things was secondary.

"Why don't you have a seat until she comes up after her class," Pam said, indicating the sagging brown leather sofa surrounded by racks of fliers in various languages across from the reception area. "Here, you can read a little about us while you’re waiting."

She handed me four or five sheets of paper in bright colors, turquoise, fuchsia, yellow. I sat down to leaf through them, though I already know quite a bit about the Institute. The year before I was accepted into the NEOMFA, I decided I needed to make sure I could really go out into the world and write about people. I was already toying with the idea of writing about immigrants, so, through a friend of a friend, I contacted Amber Subba, a refugee resettlement counselor at the Institute, and himself a refugee from Bhutan, and wrote a profile of him. Akron Life magazine liked the piece and picked it up, ran it in the December 2011 issue, after featuring another of my (non-immigrant-related) pieces that November.

A continuous stream of people came through the reception area as I sat there, lingering for a moment at the counter or rushing through to offices beyond. After a while, a tall, thin man in heavy-framed glasses and a light-weight suit came in. I recognized him instantly.

"Mr. Subba, I don't know if you remember me," i said, standing and extending my hand to shake his. "I am Sharon Cebula, I wrote about you for Akron Life a couple of years ago."

"Oh, yes," he replied without hesitation. "How good to see you again! How are you?"

I told him I was there to volunteer and that I was happy to see that both he and the Institute seemed to be doing so well. He expressed gratitude again for my interest in him and his work and wished me well, then rushed off to work with the group of short Asians that surrounded him. I was so happy to have seen him. That serendipitous meeting made this feel so much like coming home, like absolutely the right place for me to be.

I sat back down and skimmed over the turquoise sheet of the Institute's history, then the yellow sheet of class schedules. Then I came to a glossy, two-page, bi-fold, magazine-style booklet with a gorgeous photo on the front of a young man in a suit standing on the stairs in front of the Institute. "A Place To Call Home," read the title, and under it, in the tiniest, lightest white printing, the author's name: Sharon Cebula.

This was the article I had written for Akron Life! I opened it, read through it, flipped to the back and found my short bio at the end. Sure enough, there it was! This was, indeed, the entire article reproduced faithfully as a professional eight-and-a-half-by-eleven brochure for the Institute, complete with the timeline of the Institute's history and photos of Amber and his family. It was gorgeous.

My cheeks went a little warm and I felt butterflies in my belly. I looked around self-consciously for some reason. Does anyone know I wrote this? Do they know this is me? Do they care? Does it matter? I smiled to myself and debated about whether I should say something or not. I decided I would. Why not? It's just being truthful.

When I saw that Pam wasn't busy, I approached the desk.

"Hey, this brochure is great," I began. "Ya know, I wrote this..."

"Really??" She had been standing behind the counter showing a young Indian man how to do something on the computer, but now cam around the counter to look at the paper in my hand.

"Oh, wow! Yes! There's your name right there! Wow!"

Her reaction was exactly what I had wanted, I realized. The young man stared at me, eyes wide, perhaps not fully understanding what we were talking about, a bemused smile on his face. Pam stopped several people who came through the area to show them the brochure and indicate that the author of it was right here, pointing to my name on the page and then to me in the flesh. Each person smiled at me and expressed some sort of admiration or congratulations. I felt a deep rush of pride.

Eventually, I met Susan, the ESOL teacher, a short, even-keeled woman of about fifty with a wide swath of gray in her shoulder-length brown hair. She seemed quite relieved to have an assistant for her class, as another student was with her to register today, and the class was growing to almost twenty-five students, with perhaps more on the way. We exchanged phone numbers and verified class times; she said I didn’t need to prepare, just show up at nine am the first day.

As I left the Institute to go to the background check place, the young Indian man at the counter was still staring at me, that same grin on his face, perhaps just a little star-struck. And I felt like a Rock Star.