My Favorite Memory of My Mama (It Is That One Holiday After All)

After my freshman year of high school, I went away to camp for seven weeks. Largely, I do not miss things. I was homesick for maybe two minutes of the entire summer.

The second to last night of camp there is this Final Council Fire that...I won't explain because it sounds lame--especially because the culmination of the evening for all ten summers I went to camp was me sobbing over a pile of pine needles. Moving on.

The second to last day of camp, I got this really bad headache. I was packing all my stuff up, and I just felt horrible. Then, it was Beach Period. I asked to be excused, to stay in the cabin packing because I was ill, but I was reminded it was my last chance to enjoy the lake etc. etc. so I begrudgingly shuffled down to the shore. And, boy, a dehydrated teenager + major headache + burning sun + screaming children + sadness about leaving summer camp = Crazy Sickness--edging on hallucinatory.

That night there was a free-for-all cookout type thing, and it's co-ed kind of, and there are parents kindof, and, well, to make a long story short, my counselors and my cabinmates didn't realize I never went to dinner. I didn't realize I didn't go to dinner because I was actually out of my gourd and didn't know where I was, let alone that it was dinnertime. All I knew was that I was throwing up a lot in a bathroom. And, I really didn't know where I was, but my hair was covered in puke, and I was alone, and I remember thinking, "I just really want my mom." And then POOF. Someone was holding my hair back and gently led me to bed! And I was like, "Whoa--is this one of those Divine experiences where I realize that the concept of Mother is universal?" No. It wasn't. It was my real mom.

I was so sick I didn't even think to think that my parents would be coming to the cook-out function, and apparently they got there, and asked a couple people, and quickly realized I wasn't there, and my mom had this sense I was back in camp in the bathroom. So, she went to the bathhouse, and, lo and behold, there I was in all my vomiting glory.

And so I woke up in this very quiet loving atmosphere with my very own mama who I hadn't seen in about fifty days looking so sweetly at me. And I felt completely healed, and I didn't even have to miss the evening's special ceremony.

So, moms can be pretty great.


Mama's Day Dinner today!