Reunion?

Learned something about myself last night.

Once, along time ago, Bev and I spent two summers at Camp Riley at  Bradford Woods. Actually, I spent two summers there. After the first, I convinced Bev, that it would be fun, and she spent one summer there. It is a camp for individuals with a disability or chronic illness. The camp served children and adults of all abilities. We made many great friends and learned to serve others to the limits of our own abilities. However, the pressures of modernity have driven those friendships to the nagging nether regions of my mind. The regions maintained with would and should and periodic Google searches, Facebook searches, and the tenuous thread of a poorly updated Christmas card list.

Jim D. is one of those Bradford Woods friends that came into our lives almost 30 years ago. He also stayed on the Christmas card list all of those years. Jim has had Cerebral Palsy all of his life. We met when he was 30 years old at UCP camp. That is United Cerebral Palsy camp.  United Cerebral Palsy at the time had the resources to sponsor Adults with CP for a two week camp. I am sorry to say that they no longer can and only offer scholarship support for 3 or 4 weekend retreats during the year. If you are interested you can donate at their website. http://www.ucpaindy.org/  

I met Jim 30 years ago and to this day I am in humbled that any 30 year old would trust the 20 year old me to provide the appropriate care needed. Care, that if incorrect or inadequate, could mean a hospital stay and long recovery. I am grateful for the trust shown to me and the ability for that trust to be forged into a friendship through the years. Jim sent a New Years letter that reminisced about cookies that Bev made and were shared among the campers; which just goes to show how blessed I have been. There have been many plates of chocolate chip cookies. I am doing well to remember the last three plates. I must admit that I am a bit jealous that he remembered a plate of cookies when direct photographic evidence exists that shows me wearing a dress crawling up into his lap. Except for desperately needing laser hair removal on my upper lip, I was memorable.

In his letter, Jim expressed the desire for a reunion of campers and staff through the years. I have a facsimile of that reunion often actually. Bradford Woods lies on a line between home and IU that I travel a time or two a semester to visit with Ben at the Mexican Restaurant near downtown Bloomington. As I drive past, it is always a sunny late May day. Turning into the entrance and winding the way up the drive to the main building, hunting for Ed Hamilton, a person who interviewed me by phone and I have never met, I am nervous about getting my first paying job. I had worked plenty in the past but farmer’s son wages are not very good.  Thankfully, that is where my family’s arguments fell short. As I expressed interest in this summer job explaining that I would be making $80 a week plus room and board, more than once, I heard that was not very much money. In fact, it was not enough to make it worth my time, but I was able to point out, that if I stayed at home to work, I would get room and board with $0 a week.

It is always; 200 wooded acres of trails, canoes, lakes, practical jokes, exhaustion, young Mr. Ward, Jim, Neck like a giraffe, Mr Gaddis Pizza, campouts, Rick, Annie, Ed, Jennie, Jodi, Ray, and a one mile long hike into the Pine Woods with high care kids that was supposed to be impossible, and I am always 20 years old. I understand now, that impossible work is the best kind for 20 year olds.

To all of you who enjoy reunions, I take my hat off to you. I am glad that those memories are so sweet that you want to focus on them.  I recognize that my prejudices are my own limitations and that I miss something important not attending. However, I can state unequivocally that I do not like them. I had always thought that it was because I had no fun in high school. Why in the world would I want to go hang out for the evening with a group of people that did not like me and that I did not like? The answer is I would not.

But seeing the word sixty and reunion in the same paragraph, a light bulb turned on for me. I do not want to go to this reunion either. True, this would not be a high school reunion for me. I loved those two summers. I love the people, the challenges, every minute of it. However, I don’t want to go to a reunion because I don’t know how memories cast through a twenty year old’s eyes will stand up at a sweet party of  40 and 50 and 60 some-things.  I am afraid that I have changed too much; become too proficient at the calculus of the possible, the calculus of the wise, the calculus of the prudent, to have the memories of a 20 year old still be sweet.

Those proficiencies are important though. Aren’t they? That 20 year old would have never helped raised two wonderful children, be passionately in love with my wife for 25 years, never survived farming and reinvented a career. He had no ability to see the long term. Every impossible challenge was to be taken on no matter how foolish or imprudent. The path of the 20 year old isn’t conducive for the long term. How could someone who knew so much know so little?

Take Care

Roger