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I just finished my first summer session course, Storytelling. For one of the assignments, I had to write up 10 personal stories from throughout my life. I wrote them up, and asked Joe to look them over, since he has heard most of them, and was there for some of them– they were too boring for him to get through! I submitted them without another pair of eyes looking at them. Fast-forward to yesterday… Joe was going through boxes of scraps of paper we’ve saved over the years… and he finds this story I wrote for a class I had in Fall 1995. He says, “It’s better than anything you wrote for your assignment– go type this up now!” I was on a self-imposed computer break all weekend, so I will type it up now.

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When I was growing up, my family didn’t have a lot of money, but my mother always gave me anything I wanted, from trombone lessons to tickets to see Rod Stewart when I was six. She also gave me everything she had always wanted, from dance lessons to the opportunity to be more than a nurse. In the summer between fifth and sixth grades, I hounded my parents to send me to a two-week camp. I think my mother worked over-time to send me. And the second I got there, I had one thing on my mind– going home.

I became hysterical. “I miss my mommy and I want to go home,” I’d wail. I knew if I just asked her, she would come and get me. My letter writing campaign began: Please, please come get me, I’m sick, my toe’s infected, my nose won’t stop bleeding, my head aches, my throat is sore, I hate swimming, I have no friends here, and I want to go home now!! For the first week, I was convinced she would come get me on Parent’s Day. Parents’ Day came and went– I cried to her all day long, but she held firm. One more week to go.

The next three days I continued the letter-writing, the complaining and the crying. And then I am not sure exactly what changed, but I did stop crying and complaining, and almost had fun (although I still won the camp’s homesickness award!) This is when I began to resent my mother and became independent from her.

I also started to notice the way the other girls dressed, did their hair and talked about boys. I was still wearing my older-by-eight-years sister’s hand-me downs. When I got home, my sister took me shopping at the mall and I bought fashion-conscious clothes.

Sixth grade started and my best friend and I became boy-crazy, period-anticipating mall-rats, who didn’t need parents to tell us what to do. When I was about 14, I decided to throw a lot of my things away. I came across a group of letters addressed to Pioneer Village– the letters my mom wrote me at camp! I might have re-read them at the time, I might not have. Even three years later, I was still very embarrassed by my actions at camp and extremely resentful towards my mother for not letting me go home. I threw out the letters.

Five years later, when my mother died, I came across a plastic bag marked “By ALL means SAVE!!!” Inside were the letters I had written to her. This time, I carefully placed them in a box with my first blanket and kindergarten drawings.