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Team building. Photo by Bob Dicke. Check out the Buck's Rock Photo Blog for more.
I am in my happy place, summer camp. It seems insane. Over the past several years, I’ve given up opportunities and a “normal”, “regular” life in the outside world in order to be able to be here for just eight weeks of each year.
A day is a week. A week a year. A summer, a literal lifetime.
This is my sixth summer, third in music/theatre (after three in guidance). It’s hard to describe what I love about this place. The artistic community. The constant collaboration. The way people spend their days, and nights, making art, creating theatre. The campus itself. The smell of the place. The green of the trees. Even the bugs. The staff are some of the most best people I’ve ever met.
The campers are amazing. They’re my babies. I am so damn proud of them. I’ve watched a generation of campers grow from young precocious kids into thriving, creative, wonderful adults.
This year’s campers arrived today. Walking through camp and seeing them playing, making art, and hanging out as if that’s what they’d always done makes me feel so joyful. Knowing that art is happening all around me is glorious. And not just the art. The learning and growing that I know is happening at this very moment. It's overwhelming.
Being a part of the formative years of a bunch of people’s lives. Spending my summer’s helping to stage two full-scale musicals. Helping kids discover their potential and skills they didn’t even know they had.
It is damn hard work. The hours are long. There’s not much of a financial incentive. But oh god, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
For the next three weeks, we’re working on Avenue Q. Check back here for weekly updates on the show diary!
A day is a week. A week a year. A summer, a literal lifetime.
This is my sixth summer, third in music/theatre (after three in guidance). It’s hard to describe what I love about this place. The artistic community. The constant collaboration. The way people spend their days, and nights, making art, creating theatre. The campus itself. The smell of the place. The green of the trees. Even the bugs. The staff are some of the most best people I’ve ever met.
The campers are amazing. They’re my babies. I am so damn proud of them. I’ve watched a generation of campers grow from young precocious kids into thriving, creative, wonderful adults.
This year’s campers arrived today. Walking through camp and seeing them playing, making art, and hanging out as if that’s what they’d always done makes me feel so joyful. Knowing that art is happening all around me is glorious. And not just the art. The learning and growing that I know is happening at this very moment. It's overwhelming.
Being a part of the formative years of a bunch of people’s lives. Spending my summer’s helping to stage two full-scale musicals. Helping kids discover their potential and skills they didn’t even know they had.
It is damn hard work. The hours are long. There’s not much of a financial incentive. But oh god, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
For the next three weeks, we’re working on Avenue Q. Check back here for weekly updates on the show diary!
- Published on
Ruth
I met Ruth exactly two years ago today
Give or take a few days
We were in New York before camp
Visiting Aaron’s family.
As a couple, we were still kind of new then -
Even though we’d been together for a
year
Most of it had been long distance -
Everyone met at Jake and Ruth’s
apartment
Pictures of times gone by
Baby Aaron. Baby cousins. Weddings and celebrations and friends and lives lived
Richly.
And then we went out to dinner somewhere uptown
Most of the family gathered, a few key branches were not in the city
I was excited because the Tony Awards were uptown that year
And we could see the barricades and television
trucks setting up from the restaurant
Ruth was already elderly
Already in the late stages of alzheimer’s
But she smiled the whole evening
Seemed happy to see her family gathered
Jake hardly said a word
But I knew I’d been accepted when, towards the end of the meal
He ate food right off my plate
And two years later
Aaron and I are married
And on the way to living in New York
We’re still new in a way
But together forever now
We were on our way to Richmond
When we received the sad news
That Ruth had passed away
We drove to New York
Exhausted from twelve days on the road
And were greeted by the family
My first full family dinner
With my American family
The thrill of everyone being together
Tempered by the fact that the
Matriarch was missing
A joyful meal in her memory
Lobster and plates upon plates of Chinese dishes
from Chinatown
And today, the funeral
We drove to Dobbs Ferry
Saw Ruth’s body dressed in a white shroud,
Resting in a plain wooden coffin
She looked peaceful, just sleeping.
Family and friends gathered
Stories shared
Tears and tissues
The laughter of shared stories remembered
A kind and loving matriarch
A teacher who worked professionally before children
and marriage
A wonderful cook
A beloved friend
A gutsy socialist who believed in better for all
The funeral procession up to the cemetery
The coffin lowered into the earth
The Rabbi (female) leading the kaddish
Religious tradition providing a framework
Comforting custom
Helping to bury the dead
Ruth's final resting place
Overlooking a valley of trees
One of the most beautiful I've seen
In the afternoon
More eating, of course
I sat next to Jake, who ate right off my plate
The family gathered in celebration of their mom
And grandmother
I didn’t get to know Ruth during her life
But today I feel like I have a better sense of who she is
Who she was
My place in this as her grandson’s wife
The changing of the guard
Picking up where she left off
Carrying on her legacy
Education and travel and experience
A love of food, a love of people, a love of life
I grew up a world away
And yet, I feel at home with this family
Sitting with them in their grief
And memories
And love
Give or take a few days
We were in New York before camp
Visiting Aaron’s family.
As a couple, we were still kind of new then -
Even though we’d been together for a
year
Most of it had been long distance -
Everyone met at Jake and Ruth’s
apartment
Pictures of times gone by
Baby Aaron. Baby cousins. Weddings and celebrations and friends and lives lived
Richly.
And then we went out to dinner somewhere uptown
Most of the family gathered, a few key branches were not in the city
I was excited because the Tony Awards were uptown that year
And we could see the barricades and television
trucks setting up from the restaurant
Ruth was already elderly
Already in the late stages of alzheimer’s
But she smiled the whole evening
Seemed happy to see her family gathered
Jake hardly said a word
But I knew I’d been accepted when, towards the end of the meal
He ate food right off my plate
And two years later
Aaron and I are married
And on the way to living in New York
We’re still new in a way
But together forever now
We were on our way to Richmond
When we received the sad news
That Ruth had passed away
We drove to New York
Exhausted from twelve days on the road
And were greeted by the family
My first full family dinner
With my American family
The thrill of everyone being together
Tempered by the fact that the
Matriarch was missing
A joyful meal in her memory
Lobster and plates upon plates of Chinese dishes
from Chinatown
And today, the funeral
We drove to Dobbs Ferry
Saw Ruth’s body dressed in a white shroud,
Resting in a plain wooden coffin
She looked peaceful, just sleeping.
Family and friends gathered
Stories shared
Tears and tissues
The laughter of shared stories remembered
A kind and loving matriarch
A teacher who worked professionally before children
and marriage
A wonderful cook
A beloved friend
A gutsy socialist who believed in better for all
The funeral procession up to the cemetery
The coffin lowered into the earth
The Rabbi (female) leading the kaddish
Religious tradition providing a framework
Comforting custom
Helping to bury the dead
Ruth's final resting place
Overlooking a valley of trees
One of the most beautiful I've seen
In the afternoon
More eating, of course
I sat next to Jake, who ate right off my plate
The family gathered in celebration of their mom
And grandmother
I didn’t get to know Ruth during her life
But today I feel like I have a better sense of who she is
Who she was
My place in this as her grandson’s wife
The changing of the guard
Picking up where she left off
Carrying on her legacy
Education and travel and experience
A love of food, a love of people, a love of life
I grew up a world away
And yet, I feel at home with this family
Sitting with them in their grief
And memories
And love