Chapter 2 | "Breathe" - Lin-Manuel Miranda

"One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just isn't the same..."

Musicals aren't everyone's cup of tea, but I'm a sucker for them. With a song that so perfectly fit exactly what I wanted to summarize with this chapter, the fact that it came from a musical wasn't a deal-breaker for me. Before I get into that, though, let's talk about where my love of musicals came from. Like many other things in my life that I love and am passionate about, it started with my mother.

My grandfather was a professional piano player who gigged around Boston throughout the 1920s and 30s. My mother often told me that some of her fondest memories from her childhood, in the 40s and early 50s, was when her father would sit down to the piano and begin to play. In the nice weather, they'd open the windows and doors, and within minutes, neighbors would arrive -- drinks in hand -- to join the sing-alongs. My mother's favorites were the Broadway hits, which put soundtracks from South Pacific, 42nd Street, Carousel, Oklahoma! and West Side Story in regular rotation on our record player during my own childhood.

Hoping to instill the same love of musicals in me, she brought me to see Annie in Boston when I was 5 years old, and bought me the soundtrack (on vinyl) as a souvenir. I listened to those songs over and over, remembering the accompanying story with each run through. Maybe always stuck with me, because I could relate to wondering what an unknown parent was like, and whether they'd someday show up, ready to finally make all those unknowns known.

I wouldn't go so far as to say I was a theatre geek, but I was absolutely more likely to love musicals than my peers. Where most of my friends would groan and roll their eyes at any mention of one, I had a list of favorites. I grew up watching not only the movie versions of Annie, The Music Man, Oliver! and Yentl on cable TV, but I sought out my own favorites via the video rental store in The Pirate Movie, Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair (as mentioned in the book) and Victor/Victoria. That trend has maintained throughout the years, where I'm not necessarily on top of the latest Broadway hits when they're at the height of their popularity, but I'm often aware of the buzz and typically get around to checking out a performance when I can. I saw Phantom of the Opera and Rent within a few years of their Broadway debuts (in Boston, always), but had been in a bit of a Broadway drought since then.

That changed when a friend's son, who was getting immersed in the local theatre groups, put Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton on my radar in 2014. When I saw Miranda's name in the credits for Moana and couldn't help but notice how catchy all those songs were, my curiosity was piqued. I finally downloaded the Hamilton soundtrack and was immediately enamored with it, which then lead me to check out In the Heights as well.

Breathe struck me upon the first listen, because, like Maybe from Annie, I related to it immediately. I had been exactly where Nina was, spending her childhood and teen years focused on academic performance, feeling that pressure to excel as a means of attaining a working-class collegiate dream that didn't necessarily belong to her... and then unexpectedly finding herself anxiously wondering, "What'll you be?" The alignment in meaning aside, my second favorite part of the association between Chapter 2 and this song is the Spanish interspersed throughout the lyrics. If you've read the prologue -- I assume you have, if you're reading this blog post on Chapter 2's song -- then you'll remember Autumn had excelled in Spanish, to the point where her freshman Spanish I teacher urged her to register for Spanish II in the honors track for her sophomore year. That was all 100% memoir. I did, in fact, take honors-level Spanish from grades 10-12 because it was an easy way to maintain a higher GPA, and was inducted into the Foreign Language Honor Society during my junior year.

If you don't particularly care for musicals, you can always take the short cut of just looking up the lyrics to satisfy your curiosity about this song's chapter, but I hope you'll listen to it. Even without the full backstory that you'd get from In the Heights, there's enough in this song to understand what's going on in Nina's head and to see the parallel with what's happening with Autumn and her own single parent's college focus in this chapter.