This house is not actually that old. I remember when they built it behind home plate... Home plate where I can remember sitting with a fellow miserable homeschooler in the hot sun discussing how embarrassing it is when it's our turn at bat. Later I found out he was chatting me up because I was cute, but it's the first time I remember talking to the man I've been married to for almost ten years now.
If you stand on the porch of our house, where we have had late night fires and where the kids have played for hours, you can see a great deal of camp. When the trees are bare you can see all the way up to the dining room where, in my 19 years of working here, we have fed countless hungry children. If you look just across the field you can see the swing set where my future husband and I had another pivotal conversation, and where now our children swing on sunny days. You can see the spot where we stood, the sun creeping out behind the rain clouds, the bugs crawling up the many layers of tulle in my dress, when we promised to belong to each other forever.
You can see the trading post, my little spot of community in the bigger picture of camp life... Where friends confess that they are struggling with their campers, that they are broken, exhausted, and just need a little Cheerwine. Or where I discover that a good friend is head over heels for another staffer - one who was my camper once. Years later their children will come to the trading post, someday soon as campers!
You can see the pool. The pride of camp just a couple decades ago and still among the favorite activities. And why wouldn't it be? I learned to swim in that pool, taught by Splash herself. I danced mermaid dances with campers and made ridiculous unsuccessful attempts at flipping from the diving board in an effort to get my camper to try diving - which she did, far more successfully than I. And now my children have all been initiated into Splash's club, taking their own first splashes in the junior olympic pool.
And then inside my house I see it before we lived here, and now I will see it without us, with new people living in it. I know it wasn't our house exactly, but camp has always been, and always will be home to us... We have brought our babies home from the hospital and this has been their first home. We have laughed and cried, we have rejoiced and we have been heartbroken. We have watched the struggles of those around us and we have had conversation that shaped our very souls.
So now, as we pack up the dishes we have served many a Mexican casserole on, and move out the couches that held all the summer staff, emptying a hall once filled with flip flops... I can't help but feel that I'm leaving home.
So you who have sat in our living room, who have journeyed with us, who have tasted our food - let these things call to you, let them draw you to our new house. Bring home with you and we will consecrate a new patch of land.
"If you ever pass through Bag End, tea is at four. You are welcome any time... Don't bother knocking."
