The Song of Summer of ’52

So where was I? It seems quite ironic that what I most remember, what I can literally mark as one of the major turning points in my life, began and ended in the summer of 1952. Peculiarly because, as I mentioned last week, camp for the next eleven years was nothing but a blur, a time to forget.

In 1952 when I was five, we still lived in a modest middle class house on a great street with sidewalks, and other children up and down the street. I can remember being extremely happy, and playing capture the flag with neighbors, and enjoying the community life.

For whatever reasons, my mother decided that there was a camp, a farm actually in Cape Cod called Lake Farm. Which would be a great place for me to spend the summer.

It turned out she was correct. It was a small co-ed camp with beautiful college girl counselors, and a gentle place where we all tended to animals and each other.

I don’t remember many particulars (I was only 5 remember), but I do remember a few things. For some reason I seemed to excel at everything. I could run faster, act maturely be responsible, so much so, that I remember being continually placed with the older campers. I got to go canoeing with them and my destiny seemed suited to a life of fulfillment.

I was happy, people seemed to like me and to place the cherry on top of the sundae, I remember on the trainride home having my favorite girl kiss me. Heaven was found somewhere in Connecticut.

Somewhere, sometime, somehow shortly after returning home from camp that first summer, it happened. My mother got sick.

I can remember going to the hospital to pick her up and bring her home. I did not know what happened (at age 31 she woke up with breast cancer) and came home a failed woman.

You see, my family was in the fashion business. Appearance was all. My mother not only lost her breast, she lost her looks, her allure, her appeal and came home deeply depressed, and went to bed for a year. She tried, but couldn’t dote and adore her little boy who loved her. He was left and felt abandoned.

It is at this point, that not only did my mother’s life change, but mine did as well.

Later in that year, I was playing the driveway and by mistake (maybe) cut my whole arm open on a piece of chrome attached to a car I was running by. It severed an artery and my mother, luckily was home and rushed me to the hospital. Finally I got her attention and she was there when I needed her.

This was The Beginning and The End, all wrapped up into one year.

The next summer, back in camp I was not the same little boy. I no longer won races. I was demoted and placed back with children of my own age, and camp life began to take on new dimensions.

Next week, I will tell you how I see this all, how it has played out on my life. Her diagnosis, which as it turned out may have been incorrect, changed her life forever, and along with her, mine as well.

She died in 1982, but her life and death is still right there with me, deep, deep down in my soul “where thoughts are too deep for tears.”