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T A B L E++T A L K What are your favorite summer boredom busters? Exchange tips and tales in the Mothers area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Getting wise to "Babywise" A thigh of relief One step at a time Crossing borders Lusting after "Lolita" BROWSE THE SECOND THOUGHTS ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto
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____I've never gone back to the lake of my girlhood,
BY SALLIE TISDALE | Every summer for seven years, I camped with other Girl Scouts beside a lake, in the shadow of a mountain in southern Oregon. A cavernous lodge stood above the shore, and we had endless acres of tall pines and dusty trails to ourselves. In all those years I never found the camp's boundaries. We were divided roughly by age into several groups and assigned to airy cabins, each with its own campfire ring, its own name, its own quality. I remember the days as being almost without variation and filled from morning to night with songs of all kinds, funny and sentimental and silly and sad. Each day meant waking to reveille played on an invisible trumpet, to bright, cool air and pine perfume, to the clattering of battered plastic bowls heaped with oatmeal and the dull thunk of arrows hitting hay bales. And each day ended with a chorus of high girls' voices singing taps in the sudden dark. When the last note ("safely rest -- God is nigh") faded, niiiiiigghh, like a melancholy kiss, we would stay silently by the fire a few moments, each of us with hot, dry eyes toward the flame, backs cool in the rising forest night. I've never gone back, unwilling to break the spell those summers cast upon me, an enchantment with the whole and its many parts under which I still dwell. Each thing still has power over me: pine scent, canoes, wildflowers, the popping of firewood under a starry sky and girls. Those summers are part of why I still live in the Northwest, part of every camping trip and hike, part of every swim in its cold rivers and mountain lakes. A few years ago, I volunteered to work at a camp my son attended. It was all much tamer than mine had been: a pool instead of a lake, a small town complete with Dairy Queen nearby, wide grassy spaces instead of corridors of trees. It was a pretty place, with big poplars and a few snakes and house martins and bats swooping at dusk. I made pipe-cleaner animal figures and painted faces on river rocks on hot afternoons and doled out Band-Aids. But I was uncomfortable inside my thick skin -- conservative, withdrawn. Adult. The campers under my care seemed mulish and bored, and instead of singing they listened to the radio, and it seemed to me they thought smaller, more local thoughts than I had. Boys and girls were mixed together there, in a hot, explosive herd, and the girls were especially careful, unwilling to swim races or chase balls or cast a fishing line. At their age, I would take a canoe alone into the swamp at one end of the lake to sit in silence and wait for beavers and consider things. They sat together, fettered into a constant group by fear and liability insurance, heads tucked together like birds on a roost. I missed the lake. It was mostly the lake where we did things -- where we floated, swam, rowed, paddled, raced and dived -- in that round, deep, black pool a true mile wide. I swam across the lake once. It is one of the measures of courage by which I have weighed the rest of my life. There was a lake swim every summer. Each girl could try, if she could prove herself first in a test of endurance by swimming 50 laps, swimming for an hour or more without stopping. Those who dared came down to the dock on a chosen evening, when the light had begun to yellow and the mountain across the water was turning black with shadow. Counselors -- those large, strong, tall women who ambled through the woods like an admired alien race -- sat on the dock, their big legs dangling in the clean water. We swam without rest, forward and backward, pacing ourselves into the darkness. A few days later, the half-dozen of us who had passed the test were awakened before dawn. I pulled on my swimsuit and clothes -- whispering, hurrying, shivering, thrilled -- and walked through the forest to the shore with the others, no sound but our own padding feet. Six girls, six counselors, six rowboats set out with the swish of oars into the empty, flat lake in the dark, and crossed. It was a long way, that mile, so far from the safety of the camp that we could barely see its shore, and all the cabins on the other side were hidden in the hovering trees. On a tiny spit of sand under the mountain, I took off my jeans and sweatshirt and shoes and put them in the rowboat, where the counselor sat, bobbing, watching me. The group dissolved, no one spoke above a whisper, there were no longer six girls, but only one, only me, alone. I hit the icy water and swam. I swam for a long time, the counselor pacing me in silence, through black water and black air, in the shadow of the black mountain, and watched the dawn. Small splash of beaver's tail far away, the sound carrying forever into the day, the cattail silhouette of the swamp small in the distance, tendrils of mist rising to surround us in fine veils as the colors of the world appeared. Blue water, blue air, blue mountain; golden light, green trees, the red roof of the lodge ahead, a tiny patch. I swam. I pierced the glassy surface of the water like an arrow pierces the air, and watched my pale hands disappear into the blackness below. I swam, and finally came to ground near the lodge, applauded by a smiling crowd, a hero's welcome home.
On the last day of my son's camp, a hot, parched, shimmering day, I watched
the boys and girls drift sleepily off to bed while tiny bats darted across the
sulfurous porch light of the lodge. When all was quiet, when it seemed all
the children were asleep, someone turned the lights on around the pool, and
suddenly the whole staff was there on the deck -- all the crotchety adults,
worn out from the past weeks. We broke the pool rules, we ran on deck, threw
balls at each other, we floated, paddled, raced and dived under the tall, black
trees. I shed my thick skin. Near midnight, someone slipped into the shed
and turned off all the overhead lights and all that was left were the bulbs
underwater, casting a shivering aqua cloud onto the sides of trees. I
floated on my back beneath a milky spray of stars in the August night. And
then I rolled underwater, turning the world upside-down, and watched my pale
legs pierce the glassy surface of the water and disappear into the blackness
below.
Join the ongoing discussion of Sallie Tisdale's column in the Mothers area of Table Talk.
Slice of life The cake lady's caramel cakes were sweet and sticky and heavenly -- like
summers on the Carolina coast.
How to ruin your kid's summer vacation If your children could tell you what they really want to do for vacation, you might find out that your meticulous plans to keep them occupied this summer are all for naught.
Pool of memories A granddaughter reflects on the pain of getting old and missing the grandmother who didn't.
Vive la kiddie pool! In this first of an occasional series of dispatches by an expatriate mom, the author belly-flops into a cultural gulf at her Parisian swimming pool.
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