Youth
Remembering what it was like to be a girl at summer camp.
Lately I’ve noticed that hanging out at Abraham’s place means watching stuff from our childhood, remembering the vestiges of youth. That’s where I met him, by the way. At youth, shorthand for what we used to call our Saturday church service.
“See you at youth?”
“I’ll try to make it to youth.”
“Let’s hang out after youth.”
The name changed later on but that’s where it started. Youth.
I’m 33 pages into God of the Woods and thinking about summer camp. We used to have one that I would go to every year except that it wasn’t a sporty, great outdoors type of summer camp. It was a Christian one organized by the leaders at youth.
They held it from Friday to Sunday, usually in the middle of April. I don’t remember the summer sun being as cruel then as it is today. There would be hundreds of us waking up at five in the morning to board the bus to the recreation center located about two hours away from church.
I was 13 the first time I joined camp. I remember being so excited. Carina, who had gone the previous year, had really sold it to me and I sat beside her on the bus, afraid to fall asleep because someone might catch me with my mouth wide open. Not that I could sleep, even if I tried — this was all new to me and anything new is almost always too exciting.
Once we arrived we were given name tags and room assignments, each room being airconditioned with a private bathroom and bunk beds (plus an additional double bed) good enough to hold maybe six to eight campers. During my first time at camp Carina and I were put together with a bunch of random people. All of our succeeding camp stays were with our actual friends, with the girls we had formed a small group with.
Those different summers of consecutive camp weekends now swirl together, forming memories that blend with each other, so much so that I can no longer distinguish one year from the other.
But here are some snapshots:
The first plenary of camp always starting with the Top Man, this old American guy who would do a series of tricks with a top while narrating the story of salvation.
The afternoon games that I never wanted to join. (I got out of these games by faking medical excuses. Not something I am proud of but still something that makes me laugh.)
Napping one afternoon and waking up to a big haired girl named Elle looming over me with her big round eyes.
Meeting Barby for the first time and walking through a puddle of tadpoles together.
Wearing my hair in little space buns.
All the lore about demon possession and when a couple of girls fainted one afternoon, the rumor mill attributed it to that rather than the fact that the girls were actually undereating.
The boy in the wolf shirt who asked for my number.
The pastor saying that the devil was at work each time we experienced a power outage during a service. (It was the early 2000’s and camp was always in an obscure part of town.)
The bald bassist I had a momentary crush on.
Special Night, which was basically a pseudo rock concert where the worship team would jam out to a playlist of Christian songs, while we all jumped around in a sort-of mosh pit, high on the adrenaline of the moment.
Getting baptized in Spongebob shorts, emerging from the water hoping to be completely changed.
That one time we were running late for a session so we, Carina, Barby, Den, Val, and I, decided to shower together, pairs and trios cramped in tiny stalls under shower heads with low water pressure, awkwardly laughing our teenage insecurities away.
I have learned in adulthood that I can only speak for myself. That I can only name my own experiences and what they meant to me and how they look now, as I dust them off after twenty years of sitting in some attic in my brain.
Some of my peers might look back and see it as such a spiritually charged time of their lives. And I have to admit: there was something truly electric in the air. I just don’t know if it was Jesus.
I think it was the bubbling thrill of boys and girls being in a room together, the novelty of young people being away from the city, away from their parents, in this large estate of land. Not quite the woods but if you tried hard enough you could pretend that you were hidden in the middle of a grassy nowhere.
Mixed in with the magic were all the other parts of youth: the inescapable awkwardness of being young. The self consciousness I couldn’t quite kill until my late 20’s. Looking over at a boy and fearing that he was judging the love handles that would pop out whenever I sat. Wondering all the time: am I likeable? Am I fitting in? Do I look stupid? Do I look like I’m too much? Was that weird? Will he notice me? Will she befriend me?
The endless questions that became crippling deterrents to fully enjoying the thing I now miss: youth. (the experience not the place)
Youth (the place) was such a relevant part of my adolescence. I no longer think of it as the bedrock of my spiritual formation but I do regard it as one of the only places, outside of school, where I got a real social education. I can’t fully say that the ideologies we learned from it were always sound or healthy, especially now that I’ve left the church and done my own share of deconstruction.
But I can say that at its best it gave us a safe space to figure out friendship — what it was, what it could be, and what it meant to stay in touch long after camp was over.
The thing about making friends in church is that it made you believe in the concept of forever. You were bound by God and your shared experiences, by faith and an unwavering belief system, to be a part of each others’ found families now and, as a bonus, in the afterlife.
Which is funny to think about now because I’m barely friends with anyone from that time anymore.
This is mostly a matter of circumstance, the usual thing of time and change having their way with us, growing up and growing out of certain things like organized religion or maybe just youth, in general.
Or maybe that’s too profound.
Maybe the truth is much more mundane. People grew up, grew apart, got married, had kids, moved away, and started building lives so separate from mine that I no longer know how to bridge the gap.
Recently Barby had a wedding reception and that was the first time a lot of us, specifically my group from youth, were together in the same room again. It felt like camp: boys and girls in separate tables except this time accompanied by spouses or significant others.
Once it was time to hit the buffet that’s when the mingling began, the flurry of hugs and laughter, the ‘how are yous’ from familiar folk you just haven’t spoken to in a decade. The tiny air of awkwardness. The ordinary exchanges charged with history and a secret knowing.
That’s the boy who used to tease me all the time until I got mad and he had to write me an apology letter.
That’s the girl who would chase us around during sleepovers and pretend to be a creep trying to lure us to bed? Into her arms? I don’t know. It was weird.
That’s the boy who wore my bra over his shirt during one of our group pool parties.
That’s the girl who got so drunk one night that she started pretending she was a cat.
It almost doesn’t matter how old or accomplished any of us get. These stories of youth still rumble inside of me. They are funny and humbling and proof that no one fully escapes the past.
And sometimes, that’s a good thing.