A Time to Reap, a Time for Reunions

Recent evidence suggests that my friends and I are at the age (46) for reunions. Not sure if it’s a product of age or these new internet social networks like Facebook. Over the past few months I’ve gotten invitations to all manner of reunions. Like many of you, I have a decided ambivalence to these get-togethers. I know that I'd love to see some of the people I have lost touch with over the years. There’s also a part of me that thinks maybe there’s a reason why I’ve lost touch with many of the people I will see. I think I keep in touch with the people I want to keep in touch with. Why do I want to go?

This past weekend, my wife and I headed off to our camp reunion. Kira and I were counselors together at this amazing place, Silver Lake, a YMCA camp in Sussex, County NJ. Our jobs at Silver Lake were formative to both of us, ending with our marriage I suppose. Many of my best friends are people I met at Silver Lake. Saturday morning, I grab my duffel bag and head towards the door and Kira says to me, “That’s what you are wearing to the reunion?” Befuddled I look down at my “outfit” and say, “Yeh, why? Gutlerner (our camp director) said we are going to play basketball.” Kira just shakes her head and heads to the car.

North on Route 206 the conversation is flowing, Who do you think we’ll see? I hope so and so is there….We stop for a bite at the Chester Diner. Walking up the steps to the diner, Kira broaches the subject of my dress again. “Are you sure this is what you want to wear to the camp reunion?” Chuckling I say, “Yeh, I don’t feel like putting on long pants and then having to change when I get there.” To which Kira shakes her head and says, “You’re not normal.” Enjoying the fact that she’s flustered I say, “What? Should I change? What should I wear?” She huffs, “Jim you are going to see people you have not seen in 25 years and you are wearing a pair of stretched out Champion shorts and your “Ride for Rick” give-away t-shirt. That’s not normal.” She walks into the diner. I glance at my reflection in the diner window before walking in. I wish I could say I just didn’t care what people would think. Or maybe it would be better if it was a carefully calculated insouciance, but I can’t take credit for any of these things. Truth is, my outfit was dictated by comfort and convenience.

By comfort I mean comfort in the people we were going to see. My camp friends know me, they know the real me. What am I going to hide behind a new JCrew sweater, a pair of jeans and some shiny cordovan oxfords? I might not be this comfortable with other reunions but a camp reunion is a no-brainer. In Connecticut I am a suburban Dad in a town Kira and I moved to about 6 years ago. And we’ve made some really good friends, mostly people who moved there recently too. At times I can’t shake the feeling, as I stand on the side of a soccer field on any Saturday morning, that I am a caricature. That the people I know only know what I show them. But as a counselor, you live with your coworkers, and the campers, 24 hours a day 7 days a week for two months.

An example might help...I knew at the Silver Lake reunion I would see Craig Calzaretta. My first year as a counselor, (1980) Craig was a camper in my bunk. I was a 17 year old wise-ass from Brooklyn, leading trail rides for our ranch camp. I knew less about horses than most of the campers. Craig was a fairly accomplished 13 year old equestrian, from Wayne, NJ. I can still picture him with his 70’s afro and his aw-shucks manner. He was the best camper I ever had, him and Randy Giles. What he and Randy shared was a zest for life, an engaging sense of humor yet the maturity to be responsible when the need arose. A counselor’s dream.

Starting with my first summer, Craig and I shared many adventures, created many inside jokes. All I have to say to Craig is, “Stupid American fish” and he’ll laugh. I know that even though I’ve only seen Craig a few times in the last 10 years, Craig and I are tighter than many of the guys I see every day. When you share a cabin or a tent with someone for two months straight, during high school and college, a bond develops. At camp we all shared a bathroom that was more like an amphitheater, so there was no privacy. That seems a fitting metaphor for the fact that we had no secrets. Sleeping in a platform tent, talking ourselves to sleep at night, you really get to know the guys you bunk with.

The first day of a new session at camp, you get your bunk together and you head down the dirt road to "flagpole" for a camp orientation. On the way down the camp road we come into contact with other bunks heading down for this all-camp meeting. I can see Craig and I observing our campers getting to know one another as we walk. We smile at the familiarity of the routine. Invariably some wannabe-tough guy from Anytown, NJ announces, “I know Karate.” Every session some kid thinks he has a clean slate, he figures that nobody knows him at camp and decides to create a new persona. Craig and I will smirk. The smart kids in the bunk will be skeptical and a few of the rubes in the bunk might actually buy it. “Really?” And here’s the thing you learn about living at camp, You can’t tell people you know Karate if it isn’t true. Eventually, who you really are shines through.

That’s why, this past Saturday, I didn’t care that I had on a pair of stretched out Champion shorts. Because I know my camp friends, guys like Craig and Steve Swierczek and Mike Parker and Glen Gruder already know me. People like Julie Anzel. In an email exchange in the wake of the reunion, Julie mentioned that she is a single Mom and that at the reunion it felt like she was with family. She mentioned that for her and her son Jackson to be around Silver Lakers was a feeling they don’t get often enough. That’s what I am talking about, comfort. It’s so funny that Julie would say that because I was looking at her photo albums this past Saturday night in the dining hall. Julie was at Silver Lake every summer I was there. And Julie and I always seemed to have a love/hate thing going. We flirted with each other, we teased each other, and we comforted each other. In looking at Julie’s photo album this weekend we came upon photos of Julie as a 5th grader, and she said, “Oh, those aren’t camp photos, you don’t want to see them.” But I did want to see them. To see Julie, someone I feel I really know, as a wee 5th grader was pretty cool. Kind of like family.

Now I really don’t consider myself a “reunion guy.” I prefer to remember everything as it was. It’s nice to have this image of everyone as young and full of promise. Yet I have never gone to a reunion and regretted it. Although Time the Avenger is taking his toll on us all, underneath our graying temples and thickening bodies those twenty-somethings are still there, just below the surface. You could see it as many of us took on familiar roles: standing around the campfire trying valiantly to come up with the next one-liner that will make everyone laugh, Glen Gruder taking charge on the basketball court and telling us what the teams are, the camp stoners disappearing occasionally to alter their state of consciousness. There’s a comfort in this predictability. I smiled when I matched up with Larry Gutlerner, knowing without even thinking about it, after almost three decades, that I have to defend him differently because he’s lefty. For that moment, on that b-ball court, and around the campfire we were 40 something and 20 something at the same time.

As the Silver Lake alumni were leaving the dining hall Sunday morning after our final meal together, I so wanted to turn to Calzaretta and say “Did you know I know Karate?” But the moment passed and I didn’t get a chance to float that one-liner out there. I am sure he would have gotten the joke, he knows me so well.