There were nights as a kid when camp felt more like home than anywhere I’d ever been. In contrast my cousin would have to call his parents to come get him before the best of the fun started. I could never wrap my mind around why. Camp, with it’s mosquitoes and spiders, it’s silent dark nights, it’s lunchtime round-robin ballads. And we got to leave our parents. I guess all that was too much for him whereas I, thought it was magical.

We’d spend mornings in memorization, graduating to the next station whenever we’d recited our phrases perfectly. To this day I recall the words etched into my heart as I sat at picnic tables etched with Amanda+Sarah=BFF BFFF. (They probably even had the heart necklace that split like a lightening bolt down the middle and became whole only when each half was together. Yay 90’s.)

Down the line we would grab our trays in the Mess Hall, my friends giddy with anticipation that it might be the day they get three letters and have to tell a joke or sing a song. I dreaded the ritual. I just wanted to eat my mashed potatoes in peace, thank you very much.

After lunch we cleaned. I mostly remember the cement shower house where Jolene taught me to shave my toes. I thought, hairless. Yes, this is a good idea. (?) And so I tried the feel of a razor over my feet. But the Pine-Sol, the gloriously woodsy smell as we mopped the floors and gossiped about tightly folded notes from boys we liked.
“I’m going to try to find him at campfire.”
“Eee!”

Oh campfire, the warmth glowing on our faces while guitar strums bounced off the trees back to us. The hope that my sleeve would brush his sleeve, that my hands weren’t too sweaty or my breath too gross as I sang. The hope that I wasn’t off-key (treacherous). That he would have to, just have to ask me to sit by him in chapel for the rest of the week, or quite possibly, for as long as we both shall live.

The last night was always an epic duel of Capture the Flag. Two teams, two flags, one winner. We’d scramble between lightning bugs and army crawl over hills. We’d get caught, then escape, or maybe not if it was him.
I won once, you know. Finally, I can publicly announce my true identity as Capture the Flag victor. Whew, I’ve been holding that in for a while.

And the bunks, where light would ease over our bed posts, where we’d giggle for hours from sickly intoxication of Kit Kats and Mountain Dew (I tended to overdo it because it wasn’t allowed at home.) Where we’d hear our cabin mom’s voice, “Girls. Quiet Down.”

It’s the voice I used last week when my daughter was no longer my daughter but a cluster of heightened pitches that rose and fell with each inside joke. She and her sleepover friend couldn’t breathe through all the hilarity. On it went, even as I turned out my light for bed.

It’s the stuff of childhood. The memories that feel like home. And I’m so glad she has that friend.