birthday rainbows and promises

I know, even I'm sick of my birthday.  But I wrote this last week to post on the big day and my internet died.  That could have been a sign, but you know I don't heed those much.

I was in bed thinking about birthdays.  My birthdays.  My favorites, my-not-so favorites.

From the time I was eight until eighteen, I spent my birthday at summer camp.  I always think about summer camp on June 19.

But that morning I was trying to recall a specific birthday, my 20th.  Just because I was trying to conjure who and where I was a decade ago.  Total blank.  I remember my 19th birthday pretty vividly.  My high school friends got together and threw me a true little kids birthday party with cake and balloons.  It stands out as one of the best.  And of course your twenty-first is marked among the milestone birthdays.  Mine was fairly uneventful, actually, but I remember it.  I had a Meg Ryan shag haircut and wore a strapless denim dress.  But the memory of my 20th birthday eluded me.   

Until I remembered.  It was yet another camp memory, but this one was different.  For my first two summers in college I worked at the same summer camp I had attended, but I only worked the July term.  It was my favorite place on earth, and I wanted to spend my 20th birthday there like I had so many others.  There may or not have been a boy involved in this wild desire to rush to the Ozarks.

I recruited two friends who were also working the July term to make the round-trip road trip with me for my birthday weekend.  We had friends there for the June term, and we thought it would be a fun preview to the rest of the summer. 

As I recall, we arrived at the camp on my actual birthday, in time for a camp party.  I have pictures of myself in a leopard Flintstones-type dress, sunburned and smiling.  I remember I was happy to be there, in this special place, to mark the day.

And then the wheels fell off.  One of the girls I had made the road trip with – the girl I knew the least – had some sort of panic attack.  On this point I’m still not exactly clear.  There was crying, and some breathing issues, and she insisted we drive back to Oklahoma right then, probably two hours after we had arrived.  She was adamant, her humongous eyes wet in the middle of a striped structure known as the Party Barn. 

Well, I wasn’t going anywhere.  It was my birthday, and I hadn’t spent much time with the above-mentioned boy yet.  Plus, it was obvious this girl was insane.  We were surrounded by hundreds of shrieking children, half-naked men, and the lingering strains of Kumbayah.  How upset could she be?

But bull if the third girl – the one I was closest to – wasn’t ready to drive Miss Anxiety home.  Not to a hotel for the evening to calm down, not to a prayer circle (which were abundant), but back to Oklahoma.  Seven hours.  It still boggles the mind.

As only a (barely) twenty year-old can do, I ended up telling them to go on if that was their only solution.  But as for me and my leopard dress, we weren’t going anywhere.  I’m not sure if I was trying to call their bluff, but I think I just decided it would all work out somehow.  I was supposed to be back at the camp the next week for work anyway, what if I just stayed through (without clothes?  Or toiletries?  Or the funds to buy either?), or if I miraculously found a ride back with someone who was “going that way.”  My logic is easily as baffling as theirs. 

Ten years later, I’m confused as to the order that this unfolded, but at some point I received a note written on a brown paper bag from the boy.  I don’t still have that note, which is a shame.  It said something along the lines of, “I hear you’ve had a ‘situation,’ and you’re welcome to drive my car back to Oklahoma if you’ll stay.”

He was working at the camp the whole summer, so he was offering me his car for the round trip if I stayed through the weekend.  So generous.  So thoughtful.  I am as touched now as I was then.  Especially since his car was nicer than the cars either of my parents drove, nicer than any car I had probably ever driven.

I have no recollection of the rest of the weekend, but I do remember the solo drive back to Oklahoma.  I remember it – and thus the whole birthday debacle – because I had one of those Moments Of Your Life.  I can count on one hand the number of these Moments in my thirty years, and this is probably my strongest. 

Driving home, somewhere north of Tulsa, in the car of a boy I deeply loved, I saw a rainbow out the window.  Cue the music.  I know we’ve take a Lifetime Movie turn here, but it’s the truth.  A glorious rainbow reached across the sky and literally took my breath away.  It was a promise, and I knew it.  Time seemed to stop, while rushing 70 miles an hour down the turnpike.  I know exactly what I felt in those minutes.  It was a game changer.

I was happy.  My whole life stretched before me, and I knew, in the place where you know things, that it was going to be special.  Indeed, after that summer a series of events led to my whole life path changing.  I guess you can always say that one event led to another to another to another…But I trace back to that moment in the borrowed car, in the few minutes before the rainbow was lost behind the trees, as one of the highest peaks.  

You can't plan or anticipate these things.  Without the acute anxiety attack of someone I barely knew, I wouldn’t have been making that trip alone.

I’m more cynical than I was then.  A lot has happened to my heart in these ten years.  Loss and fear and heartbreak and obstinance, the usual stuff of a decade.  But I can’t help but feel I’m at another of those peaks.  It’s not marked – at least not yet – by something so obvious and dramatic as that rainbow.  But the feeling, a bit older and rustier, is similar.  It’s broader now.  Not quite as unknown.  I know, in the place where you know things, that this is a special time, a special summer. 

Ten years later, in the magic of this lake and the magic of my body, it’s a promise.  And I know it.            

Rainbow Road by tinken via flickr

Comments

[Lea Ann]

this is a beautiful piece of writing Laura. Thank you for sharing it with us.

[Megan@SortaCrunchy]

Choking back tears here. (ridiculous. I'm sitting here alone, so I may as well let loose with it.)

This absolutely made my heart sing. Thank you, thank you for sharing it.

PS - Turning thirty is monumental. I think each of us should spend at least a solid week writing about it. No apologies necessary.

[jeff]

Great story Laura, please start that book! It's time to share the gift you have.