sum­mer camp

This is, quite sim­ply, the sky view I dream of, dur­ing our months in Lon­don.  Love­ly as those months are, they are char­ac­ter­ized most often by grey skies (not “gray”, you know), the soft pat­ter of rain, a slight­ly island‑y wind whip­ping through the trees bereft of leaves.

But I’ve said it before: hap­pi­ness is about con­trast, because the pre­vi­ous day the sky was gun­metal, the air thick with humid­i­ty, the mead­ow across the road full of fly­ing turkeys.  No kidding.

So stop before you agree to do some­thing, “When turkeys fly.”  THEY DO.

I am lying here dog­go, half-reclin­ing with an icy glass of vod­ka on the arm­rest of my ter­race chair, total­ly exhaust­ed from my after­noon.  I spent it… bell­ring­ing, of course, since it is Sun­day.  For a spe­cial treat, my ring­ing band in Brew­ster arranged for us to meet at Kent School, in Kent, Con­necti­cut, whose tow­er pos­sess­es 10 bells!  More than I have ever rung.  The view out­side… to die for.

The view inside… the bells had to be muf­fled because, believe it or not, the neigh­bors object to the sound of bells!  What is wrong with peo­ple.  Reminds me of Avery’s old pri­ma­ry school in Lon­don, locat­ed next to the Chi­nese Embassy who for­bade the use of the school play­ground because the sound of chil­dren’s voic­es was too… what?  Human?  Life-giv­ing?  Joyous?

I rang today for two and a half straight hours, suc­cess­ful­ly ring­ing the tow­er’s tenor bell, Great Paul, who weighs in at just over 2700 pounds.  Ouch!  Then I was assigned “tenor” a high­ly tech­ni­cal nomen­cla­ture mean­ing “last bell whose job is only to ring in 6th place with­out screw­ing up,” while my band rang a com­pli­cat­ed method called Grand­sire.  I can report that sim­ply stay­ing in 6th place while every­one else moves around is JOL­LY dif­fi­cult!  And incred­i­bly hot and sweaty.  “Why take a show­er when you can just vis­it the tow­er?” every­one chimed in.

These are the kind­est peo­ple I have ever met, I think.  Friend­ship based on a sin­gle point of inter­est is a new expe­ri­ence for me.  I think always before I have become friends with peo­ple because I encoun­tered them in dai­ly life, found them com­pelling, and made my inter­est known.  These are the moth­ers I meet by chance through child­ish activ­i­ties, cher­ished chums of my own child­hood for whom longevi­ty is enough to solid­i­fy feel­ings, neigh­bors who prove them­selves warm and invit­ing, fel­low vol­un­teers at school.  These peo­ple I meet as PEO­PLE, and we either choose to be friends, or we are nod­ding acquain­tances, friend­ly enough.

But these peo­ple entered my life strict­ly through the avenue of lov­ing bells!  Why do I, with no excep­tions in Lon­don or here, find them all to be friend mate­r­i­al?  There is not one I would walk away from and choose to have no more to do with than to pull ropes together.

John says it is the strength of shared inter­est, espe­cial­ly a “freaky” inter­est like bell­ring­ing, that makes every­one so friend­ly.  We want to stick togeth­er.  Their par­tic­u­lar brand of sup­port­ive­ness is unlike any oth­er in my life: it is high­ly specif­i­cal­ly crit­i­cal — “speed up, but not that much!  back­stroke needs to fol­low through, let the sal­ly rise” — but at the end of each bit of ring­ing, there is a great deal of laugh­ter, relief that that par­tic­u­lar exer­cise is fin­ished, cheer­ful mak­ing-fun of every­one in turn.

I think too that it is the only thing I’ve ever tried to learn where the com­pa­ny of oth­ers is absolute­ly essen­tial.  You know me: I’m a social bird of my species.  I like to gath­er peo­ple around, and I enjoy them in all their pecu­liar vari­ety.  But cook­ing, eat­ing, writ­ing, read­ing, bik­ing… all these can be accom­plished alone.  To ring a lone bell would be… unthink­able.  It is the cam­er­aderie, the arcane jokes only we can under­stand, the com­mu­ni­ty spir­it that adds an inde­fin­able sparkle to bellringing.

When life hands me a set of ideas I don’t feel like think­ing about, a con­stel­la­tion of prob­lems I can­not solve, I quail a bit at the notion of get­ting up the courage to per­se­vere, to stay cheer­ful, to keep the bogey­men from the men­tal door.  Bells, and the peo­ple who ring them, are an irre­place­able amulet against these demons.

I came away with every mus­cle in my body protesting!

Ah, no mat­ter my exhaus­tion, it was a great after­noon.  And now I am back safe­ly home, to rejoin… Sum­mer Camp.  That’s what we’re call­ing our sum­mer super­vi­sion of dear, dar­ling Jes­samy, fluffi­est cat on earth.

Last night I went into the bath­room to find the roll of toi­let paper strewn tooth­ful­ly across the floor.

“Avery, you’re Head Camp Coun­selor.  I don’t think you’ve had enough activ­i­ties for her here at camp, if she’s eat­ing toi­let paper.”

Avery: “Actu­al­ly, Mum­my, I think eat­ing toi­let paper IS one of the activities.”

How lucky we are to have her to play with this summer.

This week we joined in a par­tic­u­lar New Eng­land activ­i­ty: Town Hall Meet­ing.  Why?  Why are we not tak­ing advan­tage of our sin­gu­lar sta­tus as high­ly infre­quent mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, to stay OUT of town pol­i­tics?  I’ll tell you why.  Our road is being threat­ened with paving.

NO!  No.

An enor­mous part of the charm of our dusty, point­less lit­tle road is its dusty point­less­ness.  We reg­u­lar­ly sit out on the ter­race with our books and com­put­ers, or our lunch­es and din­ners and shout auto­mat­i­cal­ly as cars go by, “SLOW the *&&% down!”  Because the lit­tle road goes up and down, every­one with an accel­er­a­tor at his or her dis­pos­al feels like gun­ning it.  All is rel­a­tive of course: exces­sive speed in our dusty point­less road is around 30 mph.  But still.  The clouds of dust drift across our lawn, we fear for the way­ward steps of lit­tle Katie cross­ing the road in unthink­ing joy.

The ONLY result of paving our road would be the increase of the mph to 40, or 45.  Unthinkable.

So on intre­pid Anne’s advice, we turned up at Town Hall on Thurs­day morn­ing to sit in the new­ly-car­pet­ed, acoustic-tile-ceilinged splen­dor of the Road Paving Meet­ing.  This was hilarious.

In the light of cer­tain recent events of a polit­i­cal nature hap­pen­ing down the East­ern Seaboard, we felt immense­ly proud to be part of our local gov­ern­ment.  All six of them, gath­ered around a con­fer­ence table.  Half the res­i­dents of our road lined the room.

“Whew, there’s a lot of peo­ple here,” one wor­thy board mem­ber (or what­ev­er his title might have been, Select­Per­son Extraordinaire).

“Well, I can tell you right now that Jim can’t make it.  He’s at the Wet­lands meeting.”

(Much lack­lus­ter dis­cus­sion about whether or not we should dis­cuss adjourning.)

“But we can’t make any deci­sions with­out Jim.  How long is that Wet­lands meet­ing going to take?”

“It’s got some seri­ous busi­ness on its table, I can assure you.”

(Much rustling and stack­ing and straight­en­ing of papers.)

“Fine.  I’ll just go down there and find out how long that meet­ing is expect­ed to take.”

(Avery described this robust per­son­age as “Dolores Umbridge,” if that makes any sense to Har­ry Pot­ter fans.)

She returned.  “At least 45 minutes.”

WELL.  It was decid­ed to adjourn, where­upon all the real­ly inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion took place, with secret agen­das being aired — “Not that I want MY road paved before theirs!”  “There will have to be CULVERTS!”

Final­ly we adjourned till a fort­night or some such Eng­lish-sound­ing peri­od of time, being hot­ly pur­sued by the local Crazy Per­son Run­ning For Office, who pressed upon us his mimeo­graphed (I think this term was actu­al­ly bandied about) Man­i­festo Against The Way Town Busi­ness Gets Done.   In the park­ing lot, he reluc­tant­ly let us get into our car and shut the door.  “Ser­i­al killer, ser­i­al killer,” Avery hissed.  “There’s def­i­nite­ly a sev­ered head in his car trunk.”

Oh my.  Will the road be paved?  Or will it remain, as the biased town lin­go goes, “un-improved”?  Even under the stress of “rain events,” which appears to be the ter­mi­nol­o­gy for “rain”?  Watch this space.

I spent a restora­tive after­noon at the Farmer’s Market.

Avery report­ed these to be the sweet­est berries she had ever eat­en.  Picked that morn­ing at a local farm.  The best fruit she had ever had, in fact, until these emerged from my bag.

Final­ly we had a much-need­ed cloudy day, wak­ing us with sprinkly rain and an instant excuse not to play ten­nis.  I stayed home with a left­over ham hock — a sad lit­tle sen­tence, that, but fear not.  From this piti­ful-sound­ing spec­i­men whose orig­i­nal roast the night before had been so sub­lime, came ham and bean soup, and the best Reubens EVER.

Not real­ly a recipe so much as a list of my favorite foods, piled up.  The shred­ded left­over pork, a slab of ched­dar cheese, a thin­ly-sliced onion, a hand­ful of sauer­kraut, a driz­zle of Thou­sand Island Dress­ing.  Popped into the pani­ni mak­er.  Heaven.

And we made it just in time to the most touch­ing exhi­bi­tion I have ever seen, I believe: on a par with the Viet­nam Memo­r­i­al, only so home­ly, so tran­si­to­ry, so local and per­son­al.  It is the Field of Flags, and on its trav­els through Con­necti­cut it stopped here, to move on, on Wednes­day morning.

Avery took these beau­ti­ful, sen­si­tive pho­tographs.  There is one flag in the ground for every one of the 6,126 solid­ers who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their names list­ed on a sand­wich board at the top of the hill, by the doors of the church.  So, so poignant­ly, there is an emp­ty plas­tic sleeve tacked to the board, to con­tain a tem­po­rary sheet of paper for those sol­diers who have died since the last com­plete typed list was made up.  Thank­ful­ly, since the field arrived on July 15, no one else has died.

It is impos­si­ble to look at this field of wav­ing flags, so beau­ti­ful and even­ly-spaced, so col­or­ful and love­ly, and not real­ize that every sin­gle flag rep­re­sents a fam­i­ly torn apart, mem­o­ries cut off like a spig­ot, chil­dren left father-and moth­er-less.  If it comes near to you, go see it.  It reminds me that while we make gen­tle fun of our Town Hall, while we lie back on the tram­po­line on a peace­ful sum­mer after­noon mar­vel­ling at “the red of the barns, the white of the pick­et fence, the blue of the sky,” there is anoth­er red, white and blue that has been torn apart, brave­ly left behind so far away.

How unut­ter­ably lucky we are to bask in the free­dom we have here, to enjoy our fam­i­ly sum­mer, take every advan­tage of our love for our friends and neigh­bors and family.

This luck became abun­dant­ly clear when Joel and Mol­ly arrived for an after­noon of fun and frol­ic, while Big Sis­ter Jane and Mom Jill were in Indi­ana vis­it­ing our mom.  Lunch first, includ­ing this toma­to-moz­zarel­la-pesto sal­ad that Avery’s pho­to­graph made look even bet­ter than it tasted.

The pool beckoned.

All we can do, in these times of such warm high feel­ings and such reminders of the cost of all our lux­u­ry, is to hold the impor­tant ones close — whether they’re pre­cious sum­mer cats, bell­ring­ing bud­dies, crazy Town Hall nuts or per­fect nieces — and enjoy ever moment of Sum­mer Camp.