Archive: Memories

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

When I was a child, my parents never introduced Santa Claus to my sister or me. We went shopping with my parents during December, so the source of people’s presents was perfectly clear. As the gifts were purchased, they were wrapped and placed under the tree throughout the month, and it was exciting to see the bounty of packages build up. Stockings were our one concession to popular Christmas lore, and we received things like travel-sized lotion, Chapstick, and floss in ours. This mythical Santa Claus was more of an “other people” concept; my sister and I simply accepted that other kids and other parents told each other this story, even if we didn’t do the same at our house, kind of like eating Lucky Charms. Mom warned us not to broach the subject of Santa Claus at school, lest we interfere with this familial conversation, so we didn’t let it slip that we didn’t believe in Santa Claus.

As an adult, the perpetuating story of Santa Claus still mystifies me. When I went to my first Thanksgiving with JG, I unknowingly opened a can of worms with the college-aged cousins by asking, “So, what’s the deal with Santa Claus? Is he a fairy, or what?”

“He’s not a fairy!”

“He’s a magical person!”

“Haven’t you ever seen The Santa Clause?”

“You were such a deprived child!”

Whoa.

Despite wild gesticulation, passionate rhetoric, and high volume, I was unable to grasp the childlike wonder that people associate with a belief in Santa Claus. Because I had never bought in, I was branded a cynic. The idea that Santa would watch over kids and mark down wrongs and rights was downright creepy, and no one seemed to mind that the North Pole has no viable landmass for a factory. Isn’t it at least understandable that an overweight, sweatshop-owning, speed-limit-breaking, cookie-stealing trespasser is hardly a comforting image, regardless of the quantity or quality of presents? Granted, I have a certain bias against breaking and entering because our house was burglarized when I was four, but still…

Outside of the “magic of Santa Claus” — which I interpret to mean breaking the sound barrier in a non-FTA-approved vehicle — my greatest conundrum regarding Santa Claus is that adults continue to insist on his existence among each other. My particular confusion excludes any type of child-storytelling, though that is a mystery on its own. What is it about Santa Claus that provokes twenty-year-old cousins to stand up, shake their fists, and cite Disney movies as proof of their beliefs? What is it that makes me have to thank Santa Claus when I know that the gift was from my mother-in-law, despite what the gift tag says? Is it an effort to recapture some idyllic time of innocence when “magical people” in sleighs were possible? Or is Santa Claus simply something to debate, like the echoes in “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” or how exactly Frosty could ever come “back again someday”?

Frankly, my world was less complicated before I contemplated the existence of Santa Claus, thank you very much.

I never liked snowball fights. I was a terrible shot, and I had a wimpy throwing arm — not much has changed there — and on the off chance that I made the mistake of poking my hooded head above the wall of the fort, I would most certainly be nailed with a stinging, soaking missile. Advised by my mother, who believed that snowball fights were a good way to lose an eye, I opted to hide behind whatever fortress my team had constructed and hastily make ill-formed snowballs for others to throw. I realize now that the strategy also served the interests of my mother, who was then relinquished of the sudden appearance of a shrieking child with a bruised face, for which the only remedy was hot chocolate.

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Until I was in high school, my parents’ very long driveway was all gravel, which meant that we had to shovel it during and after every Connecticut blizzard. Sometimes, my dad would just clear a path down to the bus stop and take care of the bulk of it later. He always made sure to salt the very beginning of the driveway so that it stayed ice-free; he liked to brag that he had “the cleanest apron on the street.” Sometimes, the snow fell so thickly and unrelentingly that we would take turns in shoveling shifts, forming thick snow barricades on each side of the driveway. Since I was a rather useless shoveler, my job was to clear off the cars, which involved any combination of climbing up onto the hood to get to the roof, using a big push-broom, and scraping ice off of the windows. The worst storms would dump several feet onto the cars and freeze them into vehiclesicles, much to my dismay.

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In college, we received a blizzard that dropped about two feet of snow onto the area, and I reveled in the novelty, since I had been deprived of proper snow in several years. I didn’t have to drive anywhere, and classes were canceled — what was not to love? JG met me at my dorm, and we tramped past a massive snowball fight to an empty spot by the library. Foraging for twigs and branches, we made a small snowman, catching the falling flakes on our tongues. To demonstrate the sheer depth of the snow, JG keeled over and made a snow angel. Not to be undone, I climbed up onto a bench (since the snow came up to my knees) and tipped backward into the snow. I landed softly, but I was alarmed when the force of my fall threw snow over me, and all I could see was white. At the sound of my distressed cry, JG came over and brushed the snow off with a thick glove. Agh, my burning face! I stood up, shook off the icy pricks as best I could, and suggested that maybe it was time to go in. We left our snowman to hold down the fort and headed back to my room, where a hot pot, water, and hot cocoa packets awaited.

When I was seven years old, I received a diary for Christmas, even though I’m pretty sure my Christmas list called for “dairy.” It was a pink hardcover volume with a Mary Engelbreit illustration on the front and a lock between the two covers. I kept the key in my pencil cup because, duh, who would look there for the key to my top-secret diary? My first entry detailed that Christmas morning: what gifts I received (including “this diary,” as though it weren’t self-evident), what we ate, and descriptions of every gift we were bringing to my grandmother’s house that evening. I felt the need to include explanations of everybody in my family in parenthetical references, which was an odd practice in the context of my surreptitious key concealment. Despite my best intentions, I had a hard time writing in the book because of its construction. I’d lie on my stomach in my day bed, writing earnestly, but in one wrong move, one side of the book would whip up and slap me in the cheek. I also struggled with the idea that I was writing a letter to some nebulous person. Who was Diary, exactly? And why did she care about what was going on with me? Diary was a she, of course. It was a pink journal, after all.

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I went to camp for the first time when I was eight years old and I was so excited. A whole week to go swimming and make funky crafts? Yes, please! Although I had no traces of homesickness, my mom sent along a care package with my ride. The brown-paper-wrapped shoebox contained small gifts like a flashlight, pictures of the family, and best of all, a small, spiral-bound journal. On it, a sticky note read, “Just so you don’t forget to tell us anything.” That week, I used a mechanical pencil to scrawl out breathless narratives about how camp was “soooooooooo fun,” I would be best friends with my bunkmates forEVER, and I never wanted to go home, ever. From that week on, I eschewed the “Dear Diary” format.

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In high school, I developed a habit of acquiring gel pens of all shades of the rainbow and I resolved not to use the same color two days in a row, resulting in a rather blinding display when I looked back for some cringe-worthy reading. The same thoughts always emerged: I can’t believe I liked that boy. Those girls are still that mean. I’m so glad I went to school out of state. Over the years, a blank book was always a safe gift for me, but I was picky. I always accepted blank books for various purposes, but for writing, I needed a spiral binding, lines on both sides of the paper, and a size somewhere between a half-sheet and a school notebook. In ten years, between that week of summer camp and high school graduation, I had filled up a journal every other month. My bookshelves were filled with books crowded with tiny cursive handwriting in fluorescent colors, detailing how deep and sensitive I was.

Going back and reading about my adolescent drama wasn’t exactly nostalgic for me; it was akin to looking at an album of gawky, fashionless, glasses-filled self-portraits. Even so, I kept the books until I came home to clear out my bedroom because I was moving into my first apartment. Moving between dorm rooms for four years had made me a frugal packer and I knew that the time had come. After flipping through the pages and sighing, I loaded all of the books into a box destined for the trash. Trash is such a harsh word; it’s not quite what I meant at the time, nor now. The real purpose and benefit of the journals was to help me process what I was experiencing, not to preserve it like a personal museum. That purpose has been fulfilled and I no longer needed to hold on to the physical books. In a way, I’m proud of the “body of work” I created at such a young age; what it lacked in panache it made up for in quantity and heart. That’s worth something, I think.

#92

Sunday Scribblings #73: Dear Diary