Camp

by Michael D. Eisner

  Charlie opens the jug, and the water slowly pours from Lake Temagami into Lake Dunmore.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Visiting Day

  1983

  When I was a camper, midseason at camp was filled with excitement because it was parents’ weekend. Surprisingly, I found, it didn’t even compare to the rising anticipation for me as a parent. So one summer in the 1980s, with Breck already a veteran at Keewaydin and Eric in his first year, I spent the week before visiting day somewhat distracted and excited.

  After this week of buildup, we—Jane, our youngest son, Anders, and I—took a flight to Hartford (through Chicago), rented a van, and drove off to the familiar checkpoint, my parents’ house in southern Vermont. We would be spending a day there, and then taking them along to camp the next day. That summer, we were traveling with another couple from California, the singer and songwriter Neil Diamond and his wife, Marcia, who were going to visit their son, a close friend of my son Breck.

  That year was particularly important because Eric—redheaded and left-handed, a genetic replica of his mother—had gotten off to a shaky start in Annwi. While Breck had been dubious from the instant we had arrived, Eric had been the opposite—seemingly not nervous at all when we dropped him off in June before going to visit Jane’s parents in Jamestown, New York. But a few days later, while we were relaxing in the backyard there, a letter arrived from him to his grandparents. “Dear Grandma and Grandpa, If my parents are there, send them back here to pick me up.” The next day, another letter arrived, addressed to us, and forwarded from our home in California.

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  I want you to go back to Jamestown because I whant [sic] to leave in a few days. Hope things are better there then they are here. I am a worse [this] time then [sic] the first few days. I have been telling Ken [his staffman] and Breck, they are trying to help me. I am getting home sick [sic] as much. I have done a lot of activities.

  Love Eric

  Needless to say, we were concerned. Back home in California, another letter soon followed. “Dear Mom and Dad, Camp is ok but I am only staying one month [he was scheduled for two] and I am not going on any trips.” To me, the optimist, maybe things were sounding better, but Jane still felt we had sent him to Siberia. Then:

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  I am having a pretty good time, not a great time. I am getting home sick [sic] a lot. It is boring at most parts. I want to go home at midseason. Please send candy. Someone took all of my candy. I don’t like the people in my cabin. We are doing good in inspection.

  Love, Eric.

  A more reassuring letter came from Ken, his staffman, who said Eric was doing fine and seemed to be adjusting well. We called, and I explained the situation to Waboos, who was not surprised. “This happens often—not to worry,” he told me. I listened to him and decided not to worry . . . for a few days. Now, as I rode the last leg in the car from Connecticut to Vermont, I was definitely worrying again.

  One of several entrepreneurial enterprises my father embarked upon was starting an apple business in Vermont. It wasn’t a great financial opportunity, but he always seemed happy up there, in the state where he had spent the most formative days of his youth. He would be up each weekend morning at 6:00 A.M., mending walls, clearing fields, planting trees. He spent the rest of his time during the workweek being a lawyer and entrepreneur, and making my mother feel at home in the city.

  After a long day of traveling and adjusting to the time change, we were finally in Vermont, the Diamonds and ourselves, heading to the orchard, something I’d done hundreds of times, coming back to visit my parents, now with my children. Coming home, even as an adult, created a mixture of emotions, 95 percent positive but 5 percent tinged with memories of adolescent conflict, of being grounded, of the pressures to get good grades in school, of sibling tattletales, and of all those other episodes that are part of growing up.

  We drove straight to my sister’s orchard house, which is about a mile from my parents’ house and which I had helped renovate with my father. We would see my parents in the morning. On the way, we saw a discarded old van turned over on its side next to the road. Swastikas were painted all over the vehicle, along with a message: “Kill the Jews that Hitler missed!” Even odder was the fact that it was signed in big red letters with the name of a troubled young man living down the road, who years earlier had worked for my father pruning apple trees.

  Marcia and Jane expressed their dismay and anger. Neil sat silently. We drove to the house without talking and called my father. He was incredulous, hopping in his car and speeding down the mile-long road to the orchard house. My mother stayed at their house, manning the phone, prepared to call the police. Later, we all sat in my sister’s kitchen and talked nearly all night.

  The next morning, walking to my parents’ house, trying to clear our heads, knowing we were going to walk past the painted van, we crossed paths with our neighbors, the Kibbys. Mr. Kibby had worked in the post office in Saxton’s River for years. I didn’t really want to have a conversation about the graffiti on the overturned vehicle. It was too awkward. I had become the outsider, and in spite of my own feelings of outrage, I was embarrassed. As we grew closer, we saw that Sue and Mrs. Kibby had just finished painting over the offensive insults. The spray paintings were gone. I was surprised by such a generous act. I tried to thank them.

  “This is disgusting” is all they said as they kept walking, headed for home. Suddenly, the van was lying there like a heap on the road, now a meaningless piece of junk. And we were calmed, even though the state police still showed up. Later in the day, Neil and I found some humor in how he was living a real-life version of The Jazz Singer, a film he had recently made. Two weeks later, a local Vermont judge sentenced the perpetrator to some “thinking time” in jail, saying, “I fought in World War II to stop this type of behavior.”

  Back at the house, it was time to focus again on my kids, the weekend’s original agenda. My mother served lunch at the pond for all of us; Anders played with tadpoles and tried to swim in the frigid water. I grilled fat cheeseburgers and Vermont corn. My father told stories—mostly to Anders—about sports and horses and, of course, camp. Anders kept up the questions, reminding me of my own tendency to ask, ask, ask. My father had great patience for his youngest grandson, and he kept answering.

  To his credit, my father was a very good athlete. When the conversation moved on to swimming that afternoon, he dived—both to cool off and to show off—into the very cold pond, turning a somersault off the dock. It was impressive, at least until he emerged quickly, shaking off water almost like a dog. Something seemed odd. After a few moments, I saw him whispering to my mother, and then saying, louder, that something was wrong. He was pointing to his heart and feeling his pulse, then grabbing his chest, sitting down, lying down, turning white. My son was oblivious to his reaction, having found a frog in the pond.

  I sprang into action, for the first time in my life ordering my father to stay still, a new kind of reversal of responsibilities. I ran down to the orchard house to get our pickup truck. I drove my father to the hospital in Hanover, New Hampshire, an hour north. All of a sudden, the great athlete was an older man in trouble, a scared older man. Ironically, I wasn’t the panicked son. I didn’t have time to be, I guess.

  By late the next morning, things were almost back to normal—or at least on the way there. After an overnight medicinal drip to stop his arrhythmia, my father was resting. Jane and my mother were on their way to the hospital to pick him up. They would take him to camp and meet me there; I was headed straight to visiting day with everyone else.

  I found Eric sitting in Annwi at the wigwam’s Indian Circle. He smiled and gave a little wave as I made my way over. “Camp is great. It’s cool. It’s fun. Have you seen Breck yet?” Then: “Where’s Mom?” There wasn’t one mention of being unhappy. Then he was off to canoeing, to prepare for the midseason demonstration of mastery in the water—where campers show off newly acquire
d skills like turning, stroking, and poling (propelling upstream) the canoe in a variety of different ways. After I wandered around a bit and found Breck, Jane arrived with my parents. My father was walking around defiantly, unfazed by the outcome of his bravado the day before.

  A few hours later, as I ate a few more camp burgers grilled on Waramaug ball field and found myself finally almost relaxing, I caught a glimpse of my sons—all three, all without life jackets, including young Anders—getting into a sailboat near the waterfront. My father—only hours after his heart scare—was getting in with them and pushing off from the dock. Noting the strong breeze, with the boat sailing on its edge, on the brink of turning over, I began waving frantically at them, concerned for their safety. I had reverted to being eclipsed by a bigger-than-life father, at least in my mind. After they returned to shore safely, I said nothing, even though I was angry at my father for ignoring the danger to my kids. I watched silently as he enjoyed his moment as the triumphant grandfather. I did what I always did when my father annoyed me. I complained to my mother, who did what she always did (such are family dynamics)—refer me back to my wife.

  Soon afterward, there was my father in the annual parade of old-timers, proudly striding alongside Waboos as the participants marched in chronological sequence, according to their years at Keewaydin. Watching this, all I could think about was this camp’s history, my father’s intense feelings for the camp, his incredible pride in all the generations of Eisners who had gone to Keewaydin . . . his intense feelings, which had embarrassed me at times.

  And then I realized Jane was looking at me and probably thinking the same things—about me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Good Night, Keewaydin, Good Night

  present

  Even at the outset of a hot and sunny summer day, the early morning at Keewaydin is cool and damp. A low cloud of steam rises off the lake, hovering like a layer of wet dust, and the grass is moist with dew, a soggy green carpet.

  To an outsider up and at ’em before the first gong is sounded at 7:30, the Keewaydin campus has an odd aura of expectation, like an empty stadium before a big game. The flaps of all the tents are pulled down, keeping the cold air out. The fields and pathways are quiet, almost vacant, with only occasional movement from those whose days have already begun. Peter Hare, in a teal windbreaker and rubber hiking boots, glides across Waramaug ball field to his office to get a few minutes of work done before breakfast. His gait is clean and efficient, his feet barely leaving the ground as he moves. Before he was slowed by arthritic hips and falling eyesight, Waboos, too, moved this way.

  Inside the office, Peter isn’t alone. A few staffers have been inside for some time; it’s one of the few times of the day when they can get work done without being interrupted by staffmen and campers. Nearby, inside the dining hall, one can hear the loud groans of chairs moving along the floor and the muted clangs of plates as the staff sets up for breakfast. Over by the Waramaug tents, the flaps are drawn open, and small figures poke out, about one per minute. They scurry off to the fort, then scamper back to their tents and huddle underneath their blankets, looking to grab a few more precious seconds of sleep.

  Charmed by the playful innocence of this dashing and darting, one might miss a familiar figure slowly making his way across the field. Years ago, Waboos would have been the first one across the campus, arriving in his office early. Now he has happily ceded that role to his son. Yet he still eagerly awaits the beating of the gong in the morning, hearing and feeling Keewaydin awakening.

  Now comes a crescendo of action, culminating in the ascent of the youngsters up the steps of the dining hall. On some mornings, Waboos will head to his cottage, Hare House, to sit at his desk, waiting to be picked up by a friend, or a son or daughter, and taken to Table 1. Other mornings, like this one, he’ll just stand at the side of the field, greeting campers and staff, welcoming them to the glorious New England day. As always, he sets the tone with his refusal to complain at what the aging process has wrought.

  Coming to breakfast, Pepe and Q know this is a very special morning. Today is visiting day, the final day of the first session of camp; their mothers, after a cross-country journey identical to the one that their boys had taken a month ago, will be on campus shortly.

  A month has gone by, and their summer is nearly complete. Two lives shaped by Keewaydin have just started.

  An hour later, as they skip out of the dining hall to morning formation, Pepe and Q stand out this morning, even more than their fellow campers, for their giddiness and goofiness. The postbreakfast hour flies by. Staffmen urge campers to clean up for a special visiting-day inspection, but that idea dissolves when eager families staying at nearby inns and motels begin to flood into Keewaydin. Pepe’s and Q’s mother stayed last night at the Middlebury Inn, and they are in the first wave of parents to arrive.

  Pepe runs and greets his mother with a giant hug (for such a small boy), while Q, always the cool cat, is a bit less animated with his affection. This isn’t surprising: Pepe has been talking about his mother all summer, telling his staffman Cameron how much she means to him, how wonderful she is, and how much he misses her. For Q, never the overly emotional sort, his latent enthusiasm is expected.

  Pepe, in Spanish chatter that’s even faster than his English, unleashes a torrent of words, telling his mother everything about camp. The commentary is accompanied by fingers gesturing in various directions—the basketball court, the baseball field, the lake, the dining hall, the fort. Pepe’s mom takes it all in, quiet and shy, sticking close to her son. She is—like her son four weeks ago—very far from the familiar. Now they are in Tent 5, sitting on Pepe’s cot as he shows her keepsakes from the summer, everything from his flashlight to his Keewaydin T-shirt. He continues to hold her hand as he tries to describe everything he’s done since he left Orange County a month ago.

  In his less demonstrative way, Q gives his mother a tour of his life since he came east, as well. Q’s mom immediately begins needling her son about his messy cubby and dirty clothes. After some initial coddling, Q prepares to go about his business, with his mother more at arm’s length. He locates his life preserver to get ready for the upcoming canoe races scheduled for the last day. Nonetheless, he continues to throw glances back at his mother to make sure she is watching.

  In their own unique ways, Pepe and Q are showing off—sure, they’re thrilled and comforted by the sight of their moms, but, more significantly, they’re set on showing them how much they’ve learned, what they’ve accomplished, and what their life is like at Keewaydin; that they’ve survived and thrived in this new world. They’re trying to see if in just a day their moms can grasp why the journey was worth it.

  All over campus, the day takes on a circuslike quality. Cars are double-parked in the lots across Keewaydin Road. Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers, older and younger—they all have descended on Keewaydin.

  By tradition, this last morning is devoted to canoeing, the heart of the camp’s heritage. Boys in all wigwams assemble in assigned teams for the annual end-of-the-session series of races in Keewaydin’s historic—but still in pristine mint condition—wooden canoes. Some of the canoes are as much as five decades old, and others are newer, built by one of America’s greatest canoe craftsmen, Keewaydin alumnus Schuyler Thomson. Ojibway style birchbark canoes that were originally used at Keewaydin Temagami have given way to these streamlined canoes, which are painted a rich forest green and inscribed with dedications to past campers on their bases. Scanning the boats—as campers can be seen doing from time to time—is a lesson in Keewaydin history: You’ll see four Hares, three MacDonalds, a few Flights, and other familiar names.

  The races are an exhibition of controlled havoc, with staffmen in the water getting the canoes set and marking their start as the boats race about seventy-five yards parallel to the shore. There are solo races, doubles (two campers in each canoe), and quads, or those famous (or infamous) “mojos” (four in each can
oe). There are no medal ceremonies or proclamations honoring the victors; if anything, the main challenge after each race is to try to figure out who won. Since there are no microphones or sound systems at the camp, there is no way to make announcements. After each race, the campers waddle out of the water and carefully place their canoes back in the appropriate storage rack. All the parents want to do at this point is congratulate their kids on making it safely back to shore.

  It’s hard for parents to make out their own kids in the canoes, especially tiny Pepe. The smaller campers race against one another, and the same goes for the bigger campers. Q’s mother has brought her bathing suit, and, shoes off, she ambles with a camera ankle-deep into the water of Lake Dunmore to see if she can locate her son’s boat.

  After the canoe races, the day reverts to a largely normal schedule, so parents can watch their kids in action at camp. After morning activities and a buffet lunch comes rest hour. While some parents—including those of Pepe and Q—sneak their kids off for a trip to Ben & Jerry’s or the A&W, other families can’t resist spreading out by the tents and relaxing alongside their sons, happy with the opportunity to take an hour off themselves.

  As rest hour ends and afternoon activity commences, families fill Waboos’s cottage. There are former campers and staffmen reminiscing with their old mentor and boss, wives and mothers itching to catch more than a glimpse of this leader with the strange name they have heard about for so long, brothers and sisters dragged in, suddenly entranced by the wall of pictures that seems to tell its own story, and the ageless man who presides here. Standing nearby, Russ MacDonald and Laurie Hare are suddenly just nobles in the court, diversions for those who wait their turn to talk to Waboos.