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Being sent to summer Bible camp was one of the things that shaped my core & made me who I am today. But not the way the church probably wanted.

I got yelled at for not capitalizing “he” when talking about Jesus.

My big brother, seeing I was pretty miserable, (& probably also not wanting to get up in the morning to walk me over there any more than I wanted to go) decided I could just stay home with him instead during the summer.

That was the year he made me watch The Fly & The Blob & every other horror movie our gas station had for rental.

So thanks, old biddy that yelled at me for not knowing to capitalize pronouns related to your deity.

You led me down a totally different path & I’m happy for it.

Three other clear memories from Summer Bible Camp:
Meeting a lanky, dark-skinned boy that would NOT BE QUIET while we drank tiny paper cups of orange McDonald’s drink & much preferring his quiet frilly-dress-wearing sister. Being bothered by that loud & constantly-moving boy would turn out to be my first interaction with my husband.

Learning about ammonia from a teen girl that was helping out at the church. She let me smell it (ew), explained to me about the vapors produced when mixed with bleach & held a tiny little chemistry experiment (ammonia volcano) for me, while we were supposed to be memorizing Psalms 23.

We made a sheep magnet out of cotton balls & our sheep dog puppy ate it. I was distraught for a second, but then thought “Well, that only makes sense, since he’s a sheep dog.”

I’m a funny mix of agnostic irreverence & strict adherence to tradition. “These are the things we do because they give us ROOTS.”

So on our wedding day, we did the traditional “Something old, something new.”

My something old was a lovely hematite necklace my grandfather had bought my grandmother many decades ago.
My something new was my wedding dress, made by hand by my very own mother.
My something borrowed was a lipstick from my maid-of-honor, when mine looked terrible in photos.
My something blue was the aquamarine tennis bracelet, a gift from my husband, in my daughter’s birthstone.

When my son was born, we didn’t live in the town the hospital was in & my husband was working 13-hour shifts.

In order to see us at night, he slept on a terrible cot on the floor, up against the wall in my hospital room.

When I was sleeping, the RNs would fairy my infant son out of my arms & into the bassinet next to my bed.

One shift change, I woke up to see 3 RNS & a nursing assistant standing in the door of my room, looking dreamy & giggling.

You know that sweet little peeping sounds infants make in their sleep? My son was singing a whole song of those little peeps.

But that’s not what was making those seasoned nurses giggle.

My husband was making the same sounds, as he does, in his sleep, completing the chorus.

They were completely enamored with my two men talking to each other, through their dreams.

But they weren’t as enamored as I was.

I don’t have many memories that warm me to the core like the memory of our first night with our son, my husband on a cot on the floor, a gaggle of old labor & delivery nurses mooning at us in our sleep.