chapter/ Camp

Here it is, late July. My girls did not feel ready to try sleep-away camp this summer. Some of their friends have already begun to return home with tales of great camp adventures. So I sit around, fretting about how my children are spending their time this summer, and I catch myself comparing their "now" to my "then". 

For this week's post, I looked to my memoir manuscript and pulled out the chapter titled "Camp", thinking I'd tighten it up and post it. Then I remembered that I had already posted an old version of it, long ago. Turns out it was back in August, 2011: titled "Summer Camp". 

Indisputable proof that my writing life has taken on a scary spiral form, in which essays become posts, and posts become chapters, and chapters become posts. 

The good news is that this new version is better than the old one.  

I hope you'll pardon the indulgence... 

chapter/ CAMP

“You’ll love sleep-away camp. I promise,” my mother said. “There’s not enough to do around here once school’s over. I’ll be teaching the first month of summer session. You’ll have a much better time in the country. Trust me. It’ll be fine.” 

I don’t recall the anxiety I must have had, knowing I would be separated from my mother for four weeks. I don’t remember feeling unloved or rejected. But at five years old, I’m sure I had some serious reservations about going to sleep-away camp.

My mother grew up in the country, on an anarchist commune outside of Peekskill, New York. Raised among radical intellectuals, artists, and activists in a rustic atmosphere, the natural world was the backdrop of her rich childhood memories. It was important to her that she get her urban child “up to nature” whenever possible. So it was decided: the summer I was to turn six, I would be spared a month of babysitter days stuck in our Bronx apartment. Up to nature I went.

My mother chose a Jewish Y camp for my first sleep-away adventure. Which didn’t strike me as strange, because I knew that we were technically Jewish. My mother’s mother was a Russian Jew, and after she died, my mother had been raised by a Jewish family. According to Jewish law, we were absolutely Jewish. But I didn’t think of us as really Jewish. My parents were atheists. At home and at school, I was taught to respect all religious traditions with equal weight, without having to subscribe to any. It didn’t occur to me that camp would be any different. I trusted my mother’s plan. But she had read the brochure. The one that described the weekly Shabbat services.

As instructed, we packed “four nice white shirts” along with the shorts, halter tops, bathing suits and towels, underpants, and ankle socks with my name tags sewn in, and shipped them ahead in an old trunk. At camp, everything got shoved into cubbies except the white shirts, which were hung on hangers in the bunk closet. And everyone noticed: my shirts were too fancy. Not plain, like the shirts the other girls brought. The lace bits and pearly buttons stood out, along with the rest of me.

I was one of the youngest kids at camp. And one of the very few black ones. A couple of dark-skinned girls stayed in much older bunks, way out of my reach. Surrounded by friends their own age, they seemed unaffected by the fact that their beaded braids and dark complexions made them different. On that first Friday night, they knew what to do for Shabbat. They seemed right at home. I watched and wondered, while I fumbled through the pre-dinner service in my nice white shirt. Four weeks of Fridays, with the unfamiliar rituals of challah bread and candles, and prayers to God in a foreign tongue. I mumbled along, hoping no one would single me out to light the candles or break the bread. I was sure they all noticed: I was that new little girl who isn’t even Jewish. 

I don’t recall any specific unkindness, or mistreatment. And I don’t remember having made any friends there, either. What I remember is my lost, brown self, in a sea of white shirts, in the soft glow of candlelight, praying over shiny, puffy, braided loaves of bread. And that lonely feeling of wanting to fit in, not knowing how to shed the Outsider skin. 

Although I withheld the details of my lonely Y Camp summer from my mother, she must have recognized my ambivalence about the place. The next year, we rented a bungalow in the Catskills and spent a solid month together. The following summer, we discovered Blueberry Cove, a small, artsy, back-to-nature summer camp in Maine. It was the ideal respite from the noise of the city and the structured school year. Blueberry Cove Camp became my summertime home away from home, filled with friends from all over the country, who came back, year after year, like I did. We ran around barefoot, embraced our mandatory farm chores, and swam in the frigid waters of the Atlantic. We connected with the earth, and the animals, and developed a common empathy for the natural world and each other. My mother, confident that I was happy and secure, was able to spend her summers traveling, or teaching part-time if she so chose. Summertime offered her a break from the single-parent pace of our lives. 

And I got Maine. Shoeless, godless, and free.