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The way it played was that the Saturday before church camp, our brother had to pack his bag for the trip the next morning after Sunday service. My twin sister and I were so excited to watch him lay out his clothes, fold his swimsuit and roll up the ratty bathroom towel that would serve as his beach towel.
Life in my childhood home was one of pragmatism. It wasn’t so much that we didn’t have the money for a beach towel, but more that our father was a budget-centered man who didn’t suffer from nonsense or fancy.
I don’t think we ever felt deprived in our home. We had purple bikes with sparkly tassels swinging from the handlebars. We had food and blankets.
On Saturday nights, we got a bowl of ice cream with a modest squeeze of chocolate sauce while we watched Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and, on Sunday after church, we always had a pot roast with potatoes and carrots that simmered all through the service. Our hungry stomachs growled when we pulled into the
garage and smelled that tender meat cooking.
But there would be no pot roast this Sunday. Our big brother was going to camp, and the house buzzed with energy in the machinations of it all. Our father had filled the car with gas, and our mother folded wax paper around baloney and mustard sandwiches so we could drive directly to the camp – about two hours or so away – without stopping.
My sister and I had never seen the camp, but were unnaturally curious about what we saw as a magical place. We knew there were cabins in the woods, which sounded very fairytale-ish to us. Our brother, a two-year veteran of Round Lake Christian Assembly Church
Camp, intrigued us with stories about his adventures.
Once, he said, a thunderstorm swept in, and all the kids had to run to the chapel, a barn-like structure, to wait it out. The windows were open and the rain spilled in, soaking the kids as the counselors wrestled against the wind to close them up.
He said some of the campers were scared. Someone began singing a camp song, and soon the whole chapel was full of wet kids singing full throttle with an occasional thunderbolt booming in for percussion.
It all sounded very exotic to me. I wanted to mad-dash into a chapel barn and sing songs with the rain pelting the tin roof.
Everything went according to plan that Sunday. We all sprinted to the car after the service and headed to the camp.
We were a punctual family. Our mother passed out sandwiches at the halfway mark, and we shared a sip – any more might require a bathroom stop – of water from the green Coleman thermos she had filled with ice water the night before. When we finally arrived, it was thrilling to drive down that long, dusty lane into the camp. I kept my eyes alert, searching for lucky campers walking the grounds all independent and cool.
We stood in line to register, and I grew jealous of the kids wearing white Round Lake T-shirts with green trim. They felt charmed and unreachable. There were trees everywhere and all kinds of dirt ball-fields.
I easily spotted the canteen, where our brother told us about the kid who bought a handful of fireball candies and practically had smoke pouring out his ears from the heat of the cinnamon. I think it was then that I got into my head that I should stay with my brother for the week.
As we walked up the path to his cabin, an exciting building with bunks lining the walls and a musty-smelling bathroom with tin plates for mirrors, I began to form a plan. Oh, how I wanted to be a Round Lake camper.
We helped our brother make his bed and unpacked his suitcase onto a wooden shelf at the foot of his bunk. Other kids were piling in by now, and the cabin warmed with expectancy. I sat down on the bunk under my brother’s to keep anyone from taking it. It belonged to me.
When it was time to go, my brother hopped down from his bunk to walk us out, but I remained still as a statue on that bottom bunk. My family was already to the screen door when my sister turned around, noticing my absence.
“Come on, it’s time to go,” she called back to me. I gave her a meaningful look, transmitting my intention, and she grew pale. Our father would see this as
defiance.
She ran back to the bunk and grabbed my hand, her urgency breaking my resolve. “We have to,” she said, and I let her lead me away from all the adventure and back to the van where we sang songs on the way home, which felt nothing like a wooden chapel in the middle of an Ohio thunderstorm.
We were each given a sour ball candy at the halfway mark, which felt nothing like a handful of red-hot fireballs, but those adventures would come. When we were old enough to go, I learned that the anguished ache of desire can be as sweet as the desire itself.
Abigail Blythe Batton is a staff correspondent for the Cherokee Scout. Her column runs every other week. Email her at ablythebatton@gmail.com or leave a message at 837-5122.