Evergreen

We welcome you to Evergreen,
We're mighty glad you're here,
We'll send your song reverberating with our cheer,
We'll sing you in, we'll sing you out.
Two ways, a mighty shout. 
Hail, hail, the gang's all here.
Welcome to Evergreen....FIGHT!

The victory song. The cheer song. The welcome song. The song that I remember as I think back over the summer that rocked my universe and changed my world. The worst summer of my life. The summer that would somehow forever define who I would become because I would grow up so much and appreciate life outside that summer so much more.

It wasn't meant to be the worst summer. My parents had sent me to camp because Lois' daughter Marcy went for years. She was going back this summer. She loved camp. She had special camp friends. They all returned every summer. Tears of joy swept over the girls like a momentary sugar high and with the same intensity tears of sadness drowned out all other emotions and final hugs were given when the summer came to a close.

Why did I hate overnight camp?

1. There was never enough food
2. There was never enough personal space
3. I had no friends
4. I felt so different.
5. I felt so young and not ready for the world of boys
6. I was so homesick
7. I felt all this and more every day for seven weeks.

My first time away from home. This was it.

But where does the humanity come in? What is the (positive) desired end result that warms my heart when I think of this summer? The never-ending, felt-like-it-never-even-began summer?

1. It was the summer of Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park!), of my all-time favorite book Catcher in the Rye, of painful self-awareness and stark brazen alone time.

2. It was the summer of countless acts of kindness of my friends and family from far and wide. Lynn wrote to me. My dad wrote. Mom send words of encouragement ever day. "If you want to go back to Evergreen you can, but I vote for you to be a CIT next summer." Dad: "I hated overnight camp, I only went for a few nights and then went home. If you don't want to go back you don't have to." Lauren Pappone and I had lots of correspondence from Casco Me to Andover NH. My cherished friends. My friends I had almost forgotten about. My friends who I somehow have lost that connection with but who nevertheless are still my life and still so important and special to me.

3. The letters now serve as relics of a time in my family's life that I would not otherwise have. Strange to say, but it is true. Without those letters, we would never remember Dad starting his company almost exactly 20 years ago. WIA has its first client and the fee is only $1000 but we have to start somewhere. We wouldn't remember Mom, Mike, and Danny McShane going to the beach house for the week or coming back early because of the rain. We wouldn't remember Lauren's synopsis of her day with an illustration of her bunk and common area, or Lynn's date with Peter who "is nothing compared to the lifeguards and how hot they are but he is a sweetheart. We are going to the movies Saturday night." Michael at Camp Academy. Dad taking a course at Yale and going to the Yankee Doodle every day with Nanny Lila. Can anything surpass the extreme passion and intensity of the every day mundane, in retrospect?

4. I was never homesick again. I was never afraid of boys again. I would never feel sad away from home. Or scared to take a leap. It was the summer of counting down the days until I could leave camp. Of making a mix of the songs from the summer and gleefully playing them as others wept, knowing I would be free soon again. It was the summer of rejecting this boy, the idea of dating that one, but ultimately surrendering to the nice, not so popular, not to so tall Ryan and getting an end-of-the-summer kiss. The kiss to tell everyone about back in eighth grade. The kiss that lasted a second and barely touched my lips. The kiss that marked my advancement into womanhood so much more than the training bras or monthly cycle visit that seemed to be less dramatic and more of a nuisance every time they came up.

I think back to the summer often. The changes. The elation at making it to the top of Mt. Washington in a pair of off-white canvas high-top keds. Little 7-year old Marie who became my friend and we smiled at one another, perhaps both feeling the newness of being in a strange place over the summer, even though we were six years apart. The ecstasy of putting on my dad's old blue pajama bottoms and jumping countless times on my bed at home while listening to my camp mixes in my old stereo on my bureau. Back in my bedroom. At my house. In my world. 

Less than a year after that summer, I traveled to Washington, D.C. with my eighth grade class for a week. I traveled to Costa Rica with my eighth grade Spanish class for almost two weeks. Although nervous and a bit scared of the homestay in Costa Rica, it was nothing compared to surviving the summer at Evergreen. Five years after that summer, I traveled to Barnard College, Columbia University where I stayed for four years as a student (including a semester at the University College London as an exchange student and as a a Washington DC Senate intern for Hillary Rodham Clinton). Shortly thereafter I became a Peace Corps Volunteer for two years in Ecuador after which point I moved back to the United States and after a brief stay at home in Boston, I moved to Washington DC where I stayed for almost five years, earned a law degree and met my husband.

We are home now, back in Boston, back where I started. I think back to camp. To the hate. To the fear. To the elation at being home, forever grateful to have my life back where I left it. To the following summers where I became a counselor in training and then a full counselor at the day camp near my house and experienced all the summer madness the Evergreen girls had so lusted after only with my friends, with people like me, with people who went home at night and  attended camp parties after hours on Friday and Saturday nights.

Would I send my little one to summer camp overnight if he wants to go? Yes. It's the process that matters. The end result that matters. The fear and pain and angst and ecstasy and rejuvenation and exploration that matters. What I couldn't see then, I can see now. I can see how to truly become who we are we have to experiences that shape us. Thank you, Evergreen. Thank you, everyone. The gang's all here.