Summer camps

A couple of days ago, my neighbor asked for a favor to pick up her daughter with her friend to the summer camp.

They laugh all the way, but my neighbor looked sad. She said that carrying a daughter with a friend to the camp, sad memories came from the depths: she just began to understand the greatness of her childhood trauma.

She was eight and at the beginning of July, with her father went out of the bus in the town near laguna, and headed to a two-story building, where she should spend the whole month at the camp. She felt worried but dad promises to come if anything happens. Then he left, and she opened the door of a new life.

Suddenly, she felt the smell of alienation in the squad’s bedroom,  strangers looked at her unfriendly, looking for a weak spot. She was late for two days, and they were already familiar with each other. She was the youngest and doomed to bullying.

And after – the oppressive fog. She just remembers that after a week to parents, they calmed down and persuaded her to stay. She cried, begged to take her but was left for one more week.  And again, the image is blurry, like a tear. They took her home after fourteen days.

That summer she changed. The child of the sunny smile turned into a melancholic. Something inside broke, and now she was trying to glue. That summer she believed that the world wasn’t created for her. That goodness and love come not from every human being.

I must say that all my childhood’s summers I spent at my grandparents in the village with a bunch of cousins surrounded my care and love, so I have no experience of camps. And my children also never have been in any camp. 

Today we go to the sea, and the girls talk and laugh, they are not afraid of any camp. Maybe that the time is another, maybe the kids are no longer the same as we used to be at our time?

And I pray silently that we will all remain as Sunny Smiles as long as possible. And no child would cry because of bullying and alienation.

© Fortune, 2009