Last weekend, Grace’s best friend from camp came to visit. This friend is the daughter of my best friend from camp. The sheer fact of this, and the way I kept seeing my friend’s face in her daughter’s, made me dizzy several times this weekend. Talk about vertigo: then, now, us, them, summer, the ocean, winter, tears, girls, women … it all blended together in a meteor shower of memory. Grace is still crying about her friend having left. Only two months until camp, I keep telling her.
Oh, oh, oh! Especially poignant for me, since I see that they’re walking through my hallowed back yard. It’s such a gift, when your children become friends with your friends’ children, isn’t it?
Do you know E.B. White’s essay, “Once More to the Lake”? There’s a lovely line in that piece, where White is walking with his son along a path that he walked when he was young. “Everywhere we went I had trouble making out which was I, the one walking at my side, the one walking in my pants.”
I feel that line often, walking beside or behind my no longer kids, now young men.
How perfect and how lucky for the girls and for you!
I love photo Wed. J is an awesome kid, like her mom!
Not 2 months away!!Only 45 DAYS!!!
This gave me goosebumps. How special that you all have a generational kindred friendship. xoxo
Well, second session!
That is a novel waiting to be written, my friend. Which camp did you attend?
Cape Cod Sea Camps, in Brewster, MA. It’s fabulous!
Yes – I feel fortunate about it every single day. xox
It is!! I know you know the magic of camp 🙂 xox
Wow – I do not know that essay, and am looking it up immediately!!!