Hi, I'm Emily Hooper Lansana. And I have four children and one granddaughter. My oldest son, Nile Lansana is 22. My second son Onam Lansana is 21. My third son Ari Lansana is 16. And my baby boy, Brooks Lansana is 14. And my granddaughter is two.
So, I have so many layers of response to what it has been like to parent during a pandemic. Each of my children is very different as all of our children are but I have four black boys, young men now, and a beautiful granddaughter. And there have been some real joys to this timeframe because my oldest sons are in their 20s now. And I think as parents we don't often get to spend so much time with our 20-year-olds. So, I just really enjoyed the opportunity and tried to take out of it what I could for what can we build during this time that we have all this time together.
My third son has autism. And I think for a special needs child especially with a challenge like autism, that this time has been very difficult because he thrives on structure and order. And so he loves school, he loves getting on the bus to go to school, he loves participating in Special Olympics. Which, his day is very regulated. And so to have this... Initially not having any understanding of when he will be going back to school. And then to sort of explained to him, "We don't know, we don't know, we don't know." Has been really hard and still really struggling with how to make this work for him. And my youngest son was in eighth grade. So we experienced his graduation which was going to be virtual up until the week before, when parents voted to have a socially distance graduation. He attended a very small progressive school called Village Leadership Academy. And so there were I believe nine students in his graduating class. So we were all in a church parking lot. But we made it work. And my second son turned 21 during this timeframe. And we managed to figure out how to do a socially distance 21st birthday. But it's been super hard.
I'm going to share a couple of different things. First of all, we needed to move during this time. And so trying to look at apartments virtually and trying to get a sense of, "Is this a place where my family would be comfortable? Is this environment going to work?" So at the beginning of the pandemic I sort of thought we won't be able to move because I can't figure out how to do this. And then sort of started pushing through and looking at apartments virtually and really feeling like I'm a person that needs to feel the energy of a space. And so that was really hard. And we put an application on one place and then it looked like things were going to turn around. And that didn't work. And so, ironically we ended up moving into the very first place that I looked at virtually three months earlier.
But trying to move during the middle of the pandemic, it happened for us that just after George Floyd was murdered, on the weekend of the first major protest here, that was the weekend before we were supposed to move. And so my family wanted to participate in the protest. But there are some health issues in my family that made me hesitant about being outside of the protest. No, we made the decision that we will participate as actively as we could from the car. So we did go and participate in the car and saw a lot of people that we know and love and felt that it was very, very important to be there. But then we reached a point where we couldn't figure out why we couldn't move forward. We couldn't figure out what was going on. We couldn't see far enough ahead. And I also needed to get to the apartment to pick up the keys for the new place that we were moving into. So we left. We picked up the keys, we looked at our new apartment.
And at that point had been very, very strict about following all the social distancing guidelines. And quite honestly I hadn't been to the grocery store. I hadn't been shopping. I hadn't been out of my apartment other than to look at apartments and drive my one son to work, who was working a job that stayed open during that time. Other than to do those things, we hadn't left the apartment. And so we saw that one of the South suburbs was having a drive in movie. And we decided this is like... And it was my granddaughter's favorite movie. They're playing Trolls. And it was like so much far South. So we decided we were going to drive to the South suburbs to see this movie. So between being caught up in the apartment and trying to pack a family, dinner to eat in the car. We saw this movie and say, "Like we're all going to get out of the house for the first time." Sitting in the car and we were all excited. And we literally arrived at the movie. And we all start getting these notifications on our phones that the city is on lockdown. And we're supposed to be in our houses by nine o'clock. And at this point is 8:50. And we're in some far out suburb and I'm like, "There's no way it's going to happen." Also, this movie just started. So we're going to watch it. But I can't really relax because I'm thinking, "Are we going to have trouble getting home?" So we're able to make it home but my sister was with us, who lives on the north side. And it took her forever to navigate the city to get back home. And it was just very challenging so many things coming together. The reality of feeling like, it was critically important for us in terms of who we are and what we believe to participate in this protest. The challenge of what it meant to try to move a family in this city during the midst of a pandemic. And then this sudden notification that somehow says, we can't be present in our city in the way that we're used to being present in our city. So it was a lot of things. So, that's one of the challenges that we faced during this timeframe. Yeah.
We love Chicago. We are some Chicago, Chicago people. And we love our neighborhood. We live in Bronzeville. And there was this real sense of, the pieces, the things that we've lost are they going to come back. Not just the businesses but like the sense of community. And I feel like the ways in which people have risen to the occasion to like paint these beautiful murals and provide food for each other and stand up for each other has just been very, very, very powerful. And there's just a lot of things that we do for healing like my son, who works on the North Side like during this timeframe during the course of the pandemic. We set a goal. He learned how to drive. He bought his first car and now he can make that drive.
Another thing we set out was just in terms of like taking care of ourselves, that I wanted to do more of teaching my sons how to cook so that they feel more empowered to do those things. And so my son who loves sweet potato pie, like knows how to make sweet potato pie now. And can make a mean pie. And so I also wanted to do some more of connecting with the stories of our ancestors. So we have an ancestor space in our home. And I just said, so who do you... Because I realized that I have this space but they don't necessarily know about these people. So I was like, "Look at the pictures and tell me who you want to know about." They pick the picture of my great-grandfather and I told the story of his participation in the Great Migration. And just trying to figure out like, as much as we can hold on to healing and wholeness. And not trying to be afraid of acknowledging that we feel angry and frustrated. And that we feel that the city is not honoring our citizenship here. And how grateful we are to those people who are activists. Who have courage and how we feel like we all have a part in supporting those truths.
I found is that as a creative person and as a parent, that what I love about this city is that it feels like it's a city of possibility. So I feel that I could have an idea and bring it to fruition here. I feel that there isn't anything like the creative community in Chicago and especially the creative community of people of color. Where there's so much initiative and there's so much support. I have felt that it has been a great place for me to be a person who works in the area of the arts and to have my family be able to take advantage of important rich cultural experiences, in a way that I'm not sure that we could do so easily anywhere else.
When we got ready to move I realized this was my ninth time moving since I've been here in Chicago. I've lived in a lot of neighborhoods. And in every neighborhood that I lived in I've had experiences with some form of violence. And it's not just all gun violence. Racism is a violence. And I hear people now talking about wanting to leave Chicago because of concerns about what they see. And I think that in the last couple months it's the first time I've ever even entertained the thought. This still feels very much like home. And I feel that we live in a country right now that is prioritizing violence above humanity. And so I don't believe that moving to another city would make that easier. I feel that we have to hold on to what is precious and do everything that we can to fight for change.
