My Happy Place

Maine. The Way Life Should Be. I could go by that.

The younglings and I are up in Maine for a while. They take off to go visit their dad and other “siblings” in Colorado on July 4^th. So until then we have moved in with my parents for a few weeks. The kids have been staying up here with my parents on the weekends when I have to go back to work.  So far, so good. We have had a few days down at the beach, day trips, and then last week when it was unbearably hot everyone just hung around the house. Tonight we did a trip to Mike’s Clam Shack and the kids were in seventh-heaven. They are now camped out in front of the TV watching a movie, Mom is playing on Facebook, and I was sitting here trying to get stuff together for camp, but I decided to write for a bit instead.

I apologize for not writing on my blog for a while, but things have been a wee bit funky for a while. My dear ex-husband was not being very user-friendly for an extended period of time and I had a few majorily depressing breakdowns for a while, but I am working on picking myself back up. And I am counting down the days. Twenty-nine more days. Until I get to my happy place. And my happy place is Camp Mechuwana.

I started going to Mechuwana when I was in third grade. A whopping eight years old. My cousin Joey went with me, and my dad was a counselor. I went to Tent Camp. For those of you familiar with Mechuwana it was where the Villiage now is. In the early 80’s it was simply big tents on cement slabs with cots (at least I think they were cots) inside. The things I remember about that year was braving the lake (which I have grown to love), getting my first tip-test bruise on my left thigh, cruising a meal or two and the dirty sock. From what I have not blocked from my memory, the dirty sock was a sock that had been left by a camper. The game was if you found the dirty sock in your stuff you were “It” and you had to hide it in someone else’s stuff. I remember praying each night “Lord, please, please, please don’t let the Dirty Sock show up in my stuff.” Guess what I found in underneath my pillow on Wednsday afternoon? The Dirty Sock. I went home that night. Dad and Joey finished it out, but I fell to the first-time-camper-syndrome.

I spent the next few summers at camp in Jacksonville, but started going back to Mechuwana when I was in Jr. High. I was a very artsy kind of kid; big into playing my clarinet and doing artsy projects. Linda did the camp, and I went. And I loved it! I continued going through high school. I will never forget all of the wonderful things that I made there.  And I still have all the Ukranian Eggs that I made my junior year when Tomilla took me under her wing and helped me find my little niche in life. I will always remember her for that wonderful summer! We always stayed down at Lower Camp right by the lake. It was so wonderful to fall asleep listening to the water lap against the shore right outside the back door of your cabin. And the loons. Oh, the loons! Listening to them at night was so relaxing.

The summer of 1991 my dad got  a phone call from Rev. Joan DeSanctis asking him if I would like to be a youth counselor for Jr./Sr. High Rally Camp. It was for those entering sixth grade through those who had just finished high school. Rather than go as a camper I went as a youth counselor and was head of a cabin of seven girls headed into 6^th or 7^th grade. What a blast! I took pictures that year, not many, but there is photographic evidence that I was there. I had such a wonderful time there, and made many  friends. Joan asked me if I wanted to do it again the next summer and I was all for it. I counseled the next five summers, and then took over as dean of that camp the summer of 1997. We were now just a Sr. High Rally Camp, and were staying at KK (another part of the camp) but had just as much, if not more fun! The only week I have missed since the summer of 1991 was the summer of 1999. I could only be there for part of the week as I couldn’t get that week off from work, but Joan and Julio came to my rescue and they deaned it for me that year.

Since then I have been there every summer.  In 2001 I brought Kianni and Naissa for their first stay at Mechuwana. The next summer Jayden tagged along too, and he was not quite a year old. My campers that year would argue over who got to take care of the little tyke! The kids then started Day Camp, the three of them have done Elementary Creative Arts camp, and last year Jayden had a part in Elementary Music Theater Camps musical! This summer they will be in Colorado with their dad while I am at Mechuwana. But while I am there I will hold them dearly in my heart. And when I sing that Mechuwana song “Oh Spirit of Mechuwana, beneath these cathedral trees” I will think of and pray for them, and I know that they will feel it two-thousand miles away.