Jilly Lederman presented this for Services this past Saturday night during Havdallah:
Corn. Not the Rhonda type. The Native Americans called it Maize.
This morning I stood in the cornfield, as I have each summer. I stood and felt the wet leaves brush up against my knee. A little bit taller than two weeks ago when I first came down the camp road, screaming A Little Birdie in the Tree with Alex, rolling his eyes, and Colby, pumping his fist, in the minivan. The corn seems to be on track with last summer at this time. Funny how we measure the passing of time with the progress of a starchy vegetable.
As many of you know, I am a creature of habit. Whether it is self-inflicted or a matter of karma, I’m not yet sure. I like to wear the same shoes each day. Same hairstyle. Same music. Sadly, the same wrinkles. But at least I still have the same kids. I sit at the same table in the dining hall for almost every meal. This summer the table I’ve adopted is in perfect line of sight with the CIT plaque of 1993.
I remember sitting with this group of CIT girls in 1993, as they painted their plaque and feeling for the first time in my life, old at camp. These girls had been my first campers as a JC in 1986. I had been their counselor each year they were in Seneca, and now they were starting their own life cycles at camp as staff members.
Over past 22 years at camp, I”ve met my husband, found my career, watched Colby take his first steps outside the dining hall in the dirt and continue to smile as Alex makes his rounds as a Birkat minstrel. I’ve seen so many of you grow from little girls to inspirational women. Sonia was in 0-1 when I first met her. Leah Friedman was a Seneca camper with a bazillion stretchy string bracelets on her arms the first time she came to Arts and Crafts. And now even Lyndsey Shapiro is finally a counselor. The cycles of camp are piling up. Sometimes I wonder, how is it possible that I am the same when all of you are growing up?
The reality check of course is the corn. I don’t leave camp often during the summer. When I’m here, I like to be here. But my compulsion for the corn, to stand in it, to notice the change in the thickness of the leaves, the length of silky tuft, the size of the kernels reminds me camp is a time for growth.
At the bottom of that CIT plaque, reads the following: As the corn grows taller, the summer grows shorter and we grow closer together.
And I would add, another cycle has been completed.
