William goes to camp

Spring is here at last. Hallelujah!

This picture...























was taken on Saturday afternoon at Camp NaCoMe, just west of Centerville, Tennessee. Our church had a family retreat all weekend, so William and I spent the day there. He spent most of the day, I should say, wading in the stream. It made me a little homesick for Montreat, though, and for all the rock-hopping I did there as a child (er, and as a teenager). I hope to take William there sometime soon, too.

I joked with someone that the two things that William was likely to remember from his first time at camp was 1) wading in the stream and 2) having a blue Slush Puppie drink from the canteen. And sure enough, that's exactly what he told his Sunday School teachers yesterday--that he got to drink a blue slushie at camp.

But you know what? If that's his first camp memory, that's okay. I grew up going to camp (camps, actually), and it meant a lot to me to take William to camp for the first time, even just for the day. My parents took me to a camp--Camp Hopewell in Mississippi--for the first time when I was about William's age. I only have a few hazy memories of it--but I have them. William is finally at the age where he may start forming permanent memories. And it's sort of neat to think that hey, this is something that he might rememember even years later, just like I have my early camp memories, too. He'll be 34 years old one day and recall how he waded in the creek in the sunshine and watched the older kids catch crawdads and turtles. He might remember how he asked for a blue drink and then wanted to know what color everyone else got so he could compare his slushie to theirs. Or the memories might be less specific and more impressionistic than that. Either way, it's sort of quietly awe-inspiring to realize that he's finally old enough for these memories that I have to also become his own memories, in some form or fashion.

(It also puts additional pressure on me, of course, to behave so that he can't haul out the old memories and make me look bad one day. :) )