The picture had been taken just after RayAnn and one of her cabinmates — was her name Cala? — had hauled their Royalex canoe out of the cold mountain lake waters and onto the dock of the boy’s camp, which lay just across Lake Ridge from their girl’s campus. The two were holding the boat upside-down over their heads as they toted it to the boat rack, their faces flushed with sun and their smiles wide with the happy exhaustion that comes from a day spent on the water.
They had been practicing paddling skills, especially the ‘J’ and ‘draw’ strokes that were harder but helped keep the canoe straight or turn it before it crashed into one of the other paddling duos of their fellow campers. They had practiced flipping the boat in the Blue Ridge Mountain lake water, then righting it and clambering back in. They had run relays and played Gunwhale Bobbing, Leap Frog, and other games that RayAnn could not now recall. She did, however, remember the moment that photo was taken and how, a minute later as they were walking along the creaky boards of the pier that ran beside the boys’ showers RayAnn looked through an open door and, at the age of 13, saw her first naked man.
It was one of the older campers or a counselor, not one of the younger boys, and his back was turned so he did not see her looking. She was stunned and fascinated all at once but quickly turned her head away, embarrassment adding more color to her sun-pinked cheeks. But she somehow also felt “experienced.”
That memory came rushing back now as RayAnn sat with her granddaughter, Lulu, looking at pictures and listening to a cassette tape recording from 1973 of RayAnn and her fellow campers doing skits and singing folks songs around Camp Blackberry’s campfire. RayAnn could almost pick out her own voice from the chorus and a few of the other voices seemed to match the faces of the other girls in the photos from 50 years ago. It made RayAnn feel grateful that her parents, both now gone for more than a decade, had saved the tape and photos from her camp days. RayAnn had found these when she cleaned out their house and added them to her own collection of personal memorabilia, the collection her children would perhaps discover one day after RayAnn passed.
She had brought out these camp keepsakes today while she and 8-year-old Lulu, who was about to head off for her first summer at Camp Blackberry, were ironing Lulu’s name tags into every shirt, pair of shorts and undies, pajama set, and other pieces of clothing Lulu was expected to bring along. As they worked, RayAnn thought about the day she and her mother had spent sewing labels in her own clothes so many years ago and listened as Lulu talked about how she was excited but also nervous about being away from home for the first time in a place and with people totally unknown to her. Which is when RayAnn pulled out her camp keepsakes for Lulu to see and hear.
“See what fun you’re going to have,” she said to Lulu as they browsed through the pictures. “I was nervous when I went, too, but I loved it and I learned so much.” (She didn’t mention the shower incident.)
It had been RayAnn’s one and only trip to Blackberry, a camp she had longed to attend because it specialized in horseback riding and RayAnn was a horse-crazy “pony girl.” But her parents were not wealthy and the dream seemed unattainable until RayAnn’s grandfather, who was also horse-crazy, volunteered to pay the tuition so his favorite granddaughter could realize her dream.
RayAnn remembered arriving with a trunk full of her own carefully labeled clothes, which her parents had helped unload at the edge of the camp’s bustling circular driveway, which served as the check-in area. Then they had driven away leaving RayAnn alone with 50 other girls, all camp veterans from affluent families.
It soon became obvious to RayAnn that there was a well-established pecking order and a history among these girls who all knew one another. They were not unkind or smug to RayAnn, but she never shook the feeling of being an outsider looking into their world. Thankfully, RayAnn also stayed too busy to feel homesick or excluded. Her days were filled with riding, hiking, kayaking and canoeing, swimming, sailing, archery, mountaineering, and other outdoor activities as well as arts and crafts and rainy-day movies.
The nights were also busy, filled with stargazing, talent shows, one co-ed dance with the boys across the lake, and lots of campfire sing-alongs. Back in the cabin, they talked into the dark about boys and clothes and music and movies. Sometimes there were also incidents of camp hijinks—beds were short-sheeted, ghost stories about missing campers or counselors were whispered, toothpaste was squeezed on the hands of sleeping cabin mates in hopes they would wipe it on their faces when they awoke, and there was one failed attempt to induce bed wetting by dipping a sleeping girl’s hand in a bowl of warm (or was it cold?) water as she slept.
Those shenanigans had made RayAnn uncomfortable, but they had also been part of her camp education, giving her a glimpse into the pecking order and culture of communal living that served her well when she moved into a women’s dormitory in college.
As RayAnn and Lulu looked through the pictures, the casette tape providing background music to their conversation, RayAnn felt momentarily sad. Her memories, made foggy with time, weren’t all perfect and they were tinged with the vague disappointment that comes when reality bumps up against dreams.
But then a song came from the tape deck — the traditional Camp Blackberry nightly benediction, A Web Like a Spider’s Web. RayAnn had loved that song so much that the refrain still often played in her head at random times — a permanent and beloved earworm that would never leave her:
There’s a web like a spider’s web,
Made of silk and light and shadows,
Spun by the moon in my room at night.
It’s a web made to catch a dream,
Hold it tight ‘til I awaken,
As if to tell me, my dream is all right.
It played as she and Lulu came to the last photograph, one taken on RayAnn’s last day at camp. She was sitting on her trunk at the edge of that circular drive waiting for her parents to arrive. Her long braided pigtails were pulled back by a bandana tied babushka-style. Her chin was resting in her palms, her elbows on her knees, and her expression not happy or sad, just a little worldly and wise. She looked like a girl who had found out that dreams can come true, but they are made of light and shadow and a web of tangled experiences that become woven into our beings.
“You’re going to love camp,” RayAnn said to her granddaughter. “And you’re going to learn so much there.”
— Katjack
They had been practicing paddling skills, especially the ‘J’ and ‘draw’ strokes that were harder but helped keep the canoe straight or turn it before it crashed into one of the other paddling duos of their fellow campers. They had practiced flipping the boat in the Blue Ridge Mountain lake water, then righting it and clambering back in. They had run relays and played Gunwhale Bobbing, Leap Frog, and other games that RayAnn could not now recall. She did, however, remember the moment that photo was taken and how, a minute later as they were walking along the creaky boards of the pier that ran beside the boys’ showers RayAnn looked through an open door and, at the age of 13, saw her first naked man.
It was one of the older campers or a counselor, not one of the younger boys, and his back was turned so he did not see her looking. She was stunned and fascinated all at once but quickly turned her head away, embarrassment adding more color to her sun-pinked cheeks. But she somehow also felt “experienced.”
That memory came rushing back now as RayAnn sat with her granddaughter, Lulu, looking at pictures and listening to a cassette tape recording from 1973 of RayAnn and her fellow campers doing skits and singing folks songs around Camp Blackberry’s campfire. RayAnn could almost pick out her own voice from the chorus and a few of the other voices seemed to match the faces of the other girls in the photos from 50 years ago. It made RayAnn feel grateful that her parents, both now gone for more than a decade, had saved the tape and photos from her camp days. RayAnn had found these when she cleaned out their house and added them to her own collection of personal memorabilia, the collection her children would perhaps discover one day after RayAnn passed.
She had brought out these camp keepsakes today while she and 8-year-old Lulu, who was about to head off for her first summer at Camp Blackberry, were ironing Lulu’s name tags into every shirt, pair of shorts and undies, pajama set, and other pieces of clothing Lulu was expected to bring along. As they worked, RayAnn thought about the day she and her mother had spent sewing labels in her own clothes so many years ago and listened as Lulu talked about how she was excited but also nervous about being away from home for the first time in a place and with people totally unknown to her. Which is when RayAnn pulled out her camp keepsakes for Lulu to see and hear.
“See what fun you’re going to have,” she said to Lulu as they browsed through the pictures. “I was nervous when I went, too, but I loved it and I learned so much.” (She didn’t mention the shower incident.)
It had been RayAnn’s one and only trip to Blackberry, a camp she had longed to attend because it specialized in horseback riding and RayAnn was a horse-crazy “pony girl.” But her parents were not wealthy and the dream seemed unattainable until RayAnn’s grandfather, who was also horse-crazy, volunteered to pay the tuition so his favorite granddaughter could realize her dream.
RayAnn remembered arriving with a trunk full of her own carefully labeled clothes, which her parents had helped unload at the edge of the camp’s bustling circular driveway, which served as the check-in area. Then they had driven away leaving RayAnn alone with 50 other girls, all camp veterans from affluent families.
It soon became obvious to RayAnn that there was a well-established pecking order and a history among these girls who all knew one another. They were not unkind or smug to RayAnn, but she never shook the feeling of being an outsider looking into their world. Thankfully, RayAnn also stayed too busy to feel homesick or excluded. Her days were filled with riding, hiking, kayaking and canoeing, swimming, sailing, archery, mountaineering, and other outdoor activities as well as arts and crafts and rainy-day movies.
The nights were also busy, filled with stargazing, talent shows, one co-ed dance with the boys across the lake, and lots of campfire sing-alongs. Back in the cabin, they talked into the dark about boys and clothes and music and movies. Sometimes there were also incidents of camp hijinks—beds were short-sheeted, ghost stories about missing campers or counselors were whispered, toothpaste was squeezed on the hands of sleeping cabin mates in hopes they would wipe it on their faces when they awoke, and there was one failed attempt to induce bed wetting by dipping a sleeping girl’s hand in a bowl of warm (or was it cold?) water as she slept.
Those shenanigans had made RayAnn uncomfortable, but they had also been part of her camp education, giving her a glimpse into the pecking order and culture of communal living that served her well when she moved into a women’s dormitory in college.
As RayAnn and Lulu looked through the pictures, the casette tape providing background music to their conversation, RayAnn felt momentarily sad. Her memories, made foggy with time, weren’t all perfect and they were tinged with the vague disappointment that comes when reality bumps up against dreams.
But then a song came from the tape deck — the traditional Camp Blackberry nightly benediction, A Web Like a Spider’s Web. RayAnn had loved that song so much that the refrain still often played in her head at random times — a permanent and beloved earworm that would never leave her:
There’s a web like a spider’s web,
Made of silk and light and shadows,
Spun by the moon in my room at night.
It’s a web made to catch a dream,
Hold it tight ‘til I awaken,
As if to tell me, my dream is all right.
It played as she and Lulu came to the last photograph, one taken on RayAnn’s last day at camp. She was sitting on her trunk at the edge of that circular drive waiting for her parents to arrive. Her long braided pigtails were pulled back by a bandana tied babushka-style. Her chin was resting in her palms, her elbows on her knees, and her expression not happy or sad, just a little worldly and wise. She looked like a girl who had found out that dreams can come true, but they are made of light and shadow and a web of tangled experiences that become woven into our beings.
“You’re going to love camp,” RayAnn said to her granddaughter. “And you’re going to learn so much there.”
— Katjack
Awww, this is so sweet. Very FULL-feeling. The descriptions encompass and hold the experience, which is emphasized by the idea of a recording, a ribbon of memory. (I wish the man had not had his back to her when she saw him. She only got part of the information...!) ---Macoff
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing my first naked man. It was my New York cousin who was a few years older than me. I just caught a glimpse but 60 years later, he still sets the standard. - opelikakat
ReplyDelete