Archive: Memories

20 years go, I had a solo in the kids’ choir, and everyone commented on how large the microphone looked in my hand.

19 years ago, I started gymnastics at the local rec center.

18 years ago, there were only seven students in my class at school.

17 years ago, I went to summer camp for the first time.

16 years ago, I made it to the state spelling bee with the word, “accidentally.” There, I misspelled “plethora,” a word I had never encountered, and the girl after me got (and misspelled!) easy-peasy “apparatus.”

15 years ago, when an improv group came to our school, I suggested that they do a skit about racism, two separate times. A teacher had a talk with me afterward to make sure no one was teasing me. No one was. I just wanted to see how they would have done it.

14 years ago, I won the state gymnastics championship for Level 8 in my age group. My performance that day was the best I had ever had up to that point and would ever have in the future.

13 years ago, I was stabbed with a sharpened pencil by a kid in the hallway who held it, point upward, as he accidentally ran into me in the crowded school hallway. My mother was not pleased. I still have a greenish-black mark on my chest.

12 years ago, I finally traded in my leggings for jeans.

11 years ago, I was the prop girl for our school’s production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

10 years ago, I got contacts.

9 years ago, my friends threw me a birthday party where they thought it would be a good idea to basket-toss me in the driveway. No one was hurt, thankfully.

8 years ago, I became a colorguard captain and went to band leadership camp, where I learned a routine to Ricky Martin’s “The Cup of Life” in a dusty football field.

7 years ago, I skipped my after-graduation party to hang out with my sister, who was only around for the one night.

6 years ago, JG and I e-mailed each other constantly from our boring internships. The record was 80 messages in one day.

5 years ago, I scored the perfect-sized single dorm room by applying to be a freshman mentor.

4 years ago, I visited Fallingwater with a group of civil engineering students.

3 years ago, I was three days away from getting married.

2 years ago, I started a blog.

1 year ago, I acquired my own domain.

And that was my 400th post. Crazy.

Between second grade and senior year of high school, my dad took me up to Maine every fall for a Father-Daughter Weekend at a camp that was affiliated with our church. Toward the end, we had to battle with band competitions and SATs, but we managed to keep up the tradition, perhaps out of sheer determination. In the first years, Dad and I took off after school on that Friday, and he equipped me with a list of landmarks, a pencil, and his digital watch. It was my job to record the time when we passed each spot on the list, which also showed last year’s time for each landmark, plus this year’s estimated time, adjusted according to the previous year’s data. I dutifully took down the time when we got on and off the Mass Pike, stopped at Bob’s Clam Hut, and finally arrived at the camp. Looking back, I wonder if this job was simply a tactic to keep me occupied during the trip, but I don’t put it past my dad to actually keep a record of our progress over the years.

For these weekends, Dad and I stayed in rustic cabins, ate hearty food at the dining hall, and participated in typical camp activities. We played tetherball, threw a Frisbee, and played checkers. Dad took countless pictures. Every year, we made some funky woodcraft including a birdhouse, a trivet, an inspirational plaque, a kite, and a wooden chest featuring my shaky wood-burning. When we got home, Mom always put on a good show of how nice the knick knack was, and it would stay out on display somewhere until I inevitably forgot about it a month later.

There was a tradition of making campfire meals for one of the lunches. We’d pile ground beef, potatoes, carrots, onion, and whatever else into a foil packet, and then throw it into the fire to cook. It was always a toss-up when distinguishing our charred parcels from anyone else’s, and if everything was cooked through, that was a bonus. Over the course of ten years with campfire meals, Dad honed his technique. He learned to bring his own (sharp) pocketknife, slice the potatoes thinly, make a thin meat patty, scatter cheese across the whole deal, and season liberally. Our lunches were the envy of our group for the last four years, and Dad was pretty pleased with himself.

One year, Dad and I signed up for canoeing as one of our afternoon activities. He put me in the stern of the boat to let me steer, as he put it, and we paddled around the lake without incident. Toward the end of the assigned hour, we prepared to paddle back to the boat house, but a strange wind kicked up and we were unable to fight it.  I wasn’t quite a powerless paddler, but we were no match for the gust, and we ended up drifting to a far bank.  We heard our names echo across the lake in mortifying proof that our absence was noticed, and Dad hastily tied up the canoe and grabbed my hand roughly.  He led me along the lake back to camp, and I did not take too kindly to the rough terrain and quick clip.  My slip-on Keds were hardly suitable footwear, and I was still wearing a life preserver!  Dad hauled me to the camp office to assure the camp director, a long-time friend, that we were fine, who nodded sagely at our description of our plight.  “Yeah,” he said, “if you don’t have the bulk of the weight in the back of the canoe, the wind can really push you around.”  Good to know.

On the drive back home to Connecticut, Dad always tried to persuade me that the speed limit correlated with the number of the exit we were passing, which was never less than 80.  During one ride, I remember bombarding Dad, a civil engineer and bridge inspector at the time, about asphalt and concrete.  Why was the road different colors in the different states?  How long did it take the pavement to dry?  What did they put on the top of bridges?  For a couple of hours, Dad answered my questions and showed me how they went back to his job.  Odd though it may seem, that ride home still sticks out in my memory, and I think of it every time I see a change in the road between along an interstate.  At the end of the day, when we arrived back home with duffle bags of laundry, Mom made a big to-do at the latest addition to her woodcraft collection, Dad set aside his rolls of film for developing, and we all looked ahead to the Father-Daughter Weekend next year.

I keep this picture underneath the clear, plastic cover of my work planner.

It’s Kip and me on the day we graduated from high school. It’s not at all the best picture in the world. The flash washed us out. There’s a gleaming exit sign in the background. The date is digitally stamped in the corner in neon orange numbers. The picture’s edges are worn from being transferring to a new planner each year. I love it, anyway. I knew that Kip and I probably wouldn’t see each other after the ceremony with the crush of family and friends, so I made sure to pass off my old film camera to a friend while we were waiting in the gymnasium. It is, sadly, the most recent picture I have of us together.

In a weird way, I’m somewhat grateful that the anniversary of his death falls around my birthday, and that his birthday is right before Christmas. I don’t have an excuse to forget, because in the anticipation of those occasions, there’s a heavy knowledge they are not only times for celebration; families have remembrance and grief, too. So I write what feels like an inadequate “thinking of you” card, and I send it to Kip’s parents and brother. I look at this old picture that was taken before we parted ways for school and dreams.

It has been five years since I got the news, and I still can’t believe it.

In the summers between years of college, JG and I worked at a camp called Pocono Plateau. Neither of us was intentionally looking for a camp job, but when a recruiter came to a campus fellowship meeting during the spring of our freshman year, it was one of those “what the heck?” moments. We signed on as lifeguards and program facilitators after one visit.

As true rookies — we were rare specimens of not having been previous campers — we learned how to facilitate the high-ropes courses, and we spent many, many hours coaxing kids up the rock wall or down the zip line. Somehow, I became the go-to person for little kids’ parachute games and nature hikes, and JG often found himself leading the compass navigation activity. We taught teenagers how to do trust falls and hoist each other over a wall. Every Sunday, we gritted our teeth through swim tests, which were the scariest moments of being lifeguards, by far. There were cozy campfires on the weekends, and someone always took a ritual Saturday trip to Wal-mart, which meant a good twenty-minute drive.

Lest I paint an inaccurate picture, it must be said that working at a camp is really hard work. It’s the type of job that should not be broken down into an hourly wage. Every morning, the whole staff raced to clean bathrooms before the campers returned from breakfast. Periodically, the waterfront staff spent the whole morning scrubbing scum off of canoes. Every Saturday, there was a mad rush to clean the entire camp in preparation for the next week of campers because we weren’t free to start our 24 hours of time off until everything was approved. Sometimes, counselor needs chipped away at our staffing resources, but we still had to do the same amount of work. The time that we only had six people for everyday operations lives on in infamy as That Awful Week.

Despite the inherent hardships of camp life, JG and I loved it. Even after the summers ended, we spent weekends volunteering with high ropes and in the kitchen. We met some of our best friends there, even to the point that camp people composed half of our wedding party. Best of all, we grew closer together as friends, and then as more. There’s something about scrubbing the bottom of a canoe that will draw people together. I’m not sure if it’s seeing that person with absolutely no pretense or the simple knowledge that that person is willing to hunker down and scrub, or maybe it’s both. JG left me notes in my mailbox when he knew I was having a bad day, and I still have them in a shoe box in my nightstand. Later, when one of us was away to be a counselor, we started to trade recordings. I walked along the lake on our favorite trail and talked into a tape recorder, and I left the whole set-up in his mailbox with a note to “press play.” A couple of days later, I found the tape recorder back in my mailbox with the addition of a set of earbuds “for discreet listening.” We had our first fights, discussed getting engaged, and received our first Christmas ornaments at camp. It’s a special place for us.

All of these memories flooded back when we watched last night’s episode of The Salt-N-Pepa Show, because they went on a retreat at our camp! We know the guys who facilitated their high ropes! We belayed those courses! We took our picture by that sign! We ruled over that waterfront! We cleaned that dorm! We sat on that double rocking chair! And Salt-N-Pepa were there!

Crazy.

#36, 37