brigadoon motive

the june after i'd turned eight in march, my parents packed me off to summercamp for a month. i remember being delighted - it was something i'd been anticipating for at least two years.

i know it sounds uppercrust and pretentious to go to summercamp for a month, and it's true that many of my fellow campers were right up there in the sugary-floury environs of the pie top. as for me, despite my father's belief that we also were atop the pie, our nobility had decayed, leaving us with more manner than means. i joined the uppercrusters at summercamp because my grandmother went as well and managed the kitchen.

there are a thousand things i could tell you about camp or about my grandmother, but today i'm going to focus on this one: eight year olds don't generally take to going away from home for a month. furthermore, despite my being less than two hours from home, my parents didn't return to camp for visitors' day, didn't return at all until the month was up.

i remember standing in the camp's dirt road with my mother and father and grandmother. one of them asked me, do you want to stay another month? i remember answering immediately - not a hint of hesitation - yes. "are you sure?" "yes." and they left and i stayed.

i stayed two months that year and every year after that until i was 20 and my father said it was time to stop being a camp counselor and get a real job, and i went to work in a fast food restaurant. just like that, i quit going.

i can't explain why, at eight years old, i left home with no objection and willingly stayed gone for eight weeks. i can't tell you why, at 20, i quit going away with no more objection than when i started.

the human mind is a fascinating place. the assumption is that memories -- where we went, what we did, how we felt about it -- are stored securely and cataloged accurately. if i remember it, it must be that way... right? in reality, the facts are all skewed, coloured by our then-feelings and our now-feelings, or then-circumstance and our now-circumstance. not to mention all the alterations, the nips and tucks we've made to our memories through the years.

identity is complicated, but a large part of who we think we are is drawn from a compilation of memories. this is why discovering that something in our past didn't go the way we remembered -- having our memory challenged by another's memory, or a newspaper article, or (perhaps most shockingly) our own words in a diary -- is so disconcerting. it's not only about the place and time and action. it's not even primarily because of how we felt about it. it's because we've built our identity on the past, and if the past shifts, what are we to do with our identity?

i've always thought of myself as independent, self-sufficient, a bit of a loner. a portion of this view of myself is built on that eight year old me, tromping off to summercamp for eight whole weeks, head held high, shedding nary a tear for home.

i know the basics of the memories are solid because witness accounts agree, but what if i have the memories right and the motives wrong? what if it wasn't about the "going to" -- what if it was about the "going away"?

what if i am not a brave adventurer, but instead, i am a cowardly runner?

what then?