Pull off the mask of monotony, the cloak of routine, and allow the joyful voice of your hidden heart to sing with gleeful abandon. Dance! Fling your arms wide to embrace the fresh day with its newly scrubbed face of opportunity. Then wrap the shawl of serenity around your sturdy shoulders that have become round from responsibility. And sink into the comfort of warm twilight with its flickering light and mellow fragrances that soothe, touch and inspire. 2022
A shaft of moonbeam pierced the upper pane of glass, so bright that as it hit my face, I thrashed, untangling my restless legs from the crisp percale that imprisoned them. Wadded now where the foot of my bed met the sloping ceiling, my sheets released me to the light’s magnetic pull. Cool, rough floorboards told me I wasn’t dreaming as I padded across our bedroom, hers and mine. Don’t wake her! The blue-white light beamed onto my bare toes, their rosy nails shimmering with each step I took toward the open window. Her heavy breathing, in - out, in - out, steady as my well-wound watch but with a raspy undertone from the golden hayfields nearby, gave a slow rhythm to my tippy-toed dance. Do they want her? Or just me? My freckle-tanned hands, now white in the moonlight, grasped the painted sill. I pulled at my nightshirt and kneeled into the chair below. Are they here? I pressed my tender-red nose into the screen’s rusty wire mesh and inhaled metal, while I surveyed the inky sky. Careful! Don’t startle them away! Twisting into position, I watched the moonbeam shift. Like a spotlight, its ray panned to the garage roof, where dark gray asphalt shingles sparkled, and then onto the dewy grass below. There they are! Two spherical heads leaned together, as if in silent consultation. With sleek bodies and sloping necks, like some primitive birds whose tail feathers lifted in a proud pose, they bobbed and spoke in their hushed language. But I understood! Somehow, deep inside my head, I knew I’d seen them before! They’re baumpies! From the shadows, two smaller beings hovered, inching ever nearer. They had no tails, just round heads, thin necks, and smooth bodies- like overgrown bowling pins suspended above the grass waiting for a game to begin. The baumpies pivoted their heavy, wide bodies toward the others and leaned their sphere-heads closer. The little ones bobbed and twirled in delight. Then, in perfect unison, the four creatures - two large and two small - lifted their round heads up, up, toward me. Do they know I'm watching them? The spotlight followed their gaze, back across the rooftop and into my face, blinding me as my eyes narrowed still trying to see their faces. Do they have faces? PING! A Junebug hit the screen. And another! I flinched. And blinked. Then the night turned to pitch. Nothing was visible outside my bedroom window, not even the stars. The baumpies had taken their brilliant light with them! “What did you want?” I asked, gazing into the blank night. “Did you come for me?” “We’ll be back,” the silent voices in my head replied. “Until then, you have her.”
The weather is deliciously warm today, with a high in the 60s. There’s not a cloud in the sky- a perfect spring Hoosier day, albeit somewhat early.
Too bad it had to be ruined.
After my husband left to run errands this afternoon, I let the pup into the back yard and pulled down the screen on the storm door. Why not blow the stink out, as an old friend used to say? The cool breeze fanned my hair, and I gazed through the mesh, dreaming of the gardening and hammocking days ahead.
Our power had gone out, but that was no problem. I sat at the family room table and called my mom for a brief catch-up. No, I didn’t know when the power would return, I told her. But there were a few things I could do anyway. As we chatted, a row of empty milk jugs awaiting the last of the winter sowing caught my eye. Maybe I could finish that project by myself and without power, I mused to her. My husband and I had worked together on the first round, he doing the cutting and transporting to the garden and me filling them with potting soil and seeds, since I tend to draw blood any time a knife is required. But I could work carefully in the kitchen light and then take them outside myself using a cookie sheet. Mom wished me well, and we hung up.
As I sat considering the equipment I would need to find in the dark garage, my eyes glanced back to the screen door. Something strange caught my eye. What WAS that?
High up on the left side of the heavy door’s jamb, between it and the storm door, a blackish outline appeared. I walked closer and stared. How odd! Could it be some kind of mildew? My mind ran to the outdoor furniture cleaning advertisement I’d seen on Facebook yesterday.
No, this shape looked like something I should recognize. I leaned a bit closer. Ewww! Were those legs? Four of them, and all splayed in different directions?
I shrank back in horror.
A frog or toad had been smashed between the hinged edge of the door and its frame!
And now it was a withered, flattened mess! Head-high in our doorway!
It must’ve been hanging there all winter to be so flat and desiccated.
Eeeeewwwww!
I slammed the big door shut. How could I have been so close to that thing when I let the dog out? It was right over my shoulder! And it probably had been stuck there every single day I’d let her out for the past several months! Who killed it? How long had that thing been freezing and drying over and over during our fickle winter weather?
I sat shuddering and pondered my options:
Leave the dog out and sit and fret
Find a book to read near a window and just wait until my husband gets home
Do the winter sowing, suck it up and take the milk jugs outside, but avert my eyes- I mean, after all, the disgusting thing was dead, and not likely to fall or jump on me.
My shivering stopped, but my frown of revulsion lingered. I knew the adult thing to do. Could I manage it?
I’m proud to say that I sucked it up. At least partially. I did finish the milk jug planting. But there was no way I was going to get a putty knife and scrape that creepy, crusty thing off the door jamb. No, my husband would have to do that.
I hate frogs. I hate bats, and I hate mice.
Sadly, I have a history of relying on others to handle such situations, but at least I took a small step this time!
Once, as young teenagers babysitting for the neighbors who lived in the big Civil War era house across the field from us, my younger sister and I settled onto their sectional for some late-night television. During a commercial, we heard an odd, high-pitched noise. It wasn’t coming from the TV. The two little girls we were watching slept lightly farther down the long, curving sofa, awaiting their parents’ return. So we tiptoed around the room, looking for the source of the strange noise.
To our bewilderment, the squeaking noise seemed to be coming from the fireplace. I leaned closer and saw a small black creature crawling on a log! I stifled a scream when I realized it was a bat. I knew what bats could do! I watched Dark Shadows after school every day! I grabbed the folding fire screen and flattened it against the stone fireplace opening. Then I shoved an ottoman against it to try to trap the bat in place. Ha! I would protect us all!
I sat on the couch, monitoring the fireplace screen. The hideous little creature began clawing its way up the screen, edging ever slowly toward the slight opening at the top where the screen didn’t fit tightly against the rusticated stone. It was going to get out! And fly around the room, probably getting tangled in our long hair! I just knew it!
My sister called our older brother, who eventually agreed to come down the road to dispose of the hideous thing. He found a pink Mr. Bubble box in the family’s trash masher and used the fireplace poker to nudge the bat inside as we girls watched from the other side of the sofa. He ended up tossing it in the ditch on the way home. How did we know?
Just as we settled back onto the sectional with a popcorn reward for our quick problem solving, if not for our bravery, and with the kids now snoring away, we heard another squeak. The friends of our invader protested his capture. Three more bats crept and crawled and stretched their bony wings inside the firebox. Another call to our brother, a broken light fixture above the fireplace, and an off-handed explanation from the parents that they’d just had the chimney cleaned was enough to end our evening… and our babysitter/client relationship. It also cemented my hatred of bats.
But bats weren’t the only hideous creatures that terrorized me.
A year or two later, in my required high school biology class, the teacher announced we would have a lab the next day. I wasn’t impressed. Surely, though, it would be better than our usual classroom activity, fifty-five minutes of copying the teacher’s cursive notes from the blackboard as he sat nearby reading the newspaper with his feet propped up on a black lab desk.
In an atypically excited voice, the teacher told us we would be dissecting frogs, ones that had been “pithed,” so they’d be alive but paralyzed. This was supposed to be very exciting because we could see their hearts beating.
Blech!
But at least I had a boy as a lab partner. Maybe he’d want to handle the slimy thing and do all the cutting.
Sure enough, he didn’t mind, but I had to do something to get my participation points while the teacher circulated throughout the room. As my lab partner stretched one of the specimen’s lower legs onto the black wax pad, I took a wig pin and stabbed it, about ankle high. That wasn’t so bad, I thought. I stabbed the other long leg as my partner held it and the frog’s belly still. I was starting to be kind of pleased with my participation.
Then the boy took one of the frog’s arms and pulled it to the side. Confident and ready with another wig pin, I jabbed the sharp metal into the frog’s wrist and secured it to the wax. My partner, ready for the fun part that involved scalpels, let go of the pithed amphibian to reach for the tool.
Then it happened.
Just as I started to jab in the last wig pin, the frog REACHED ACROSS ITS BODY with its free hand and grabbed the pin that secured its other arm! That frog was trying to pull out the pin and escape! And if it could do that, what could it do to me? It might want revenge! Did I care that it might object to our surgery without anesthesia?
Heck, no! I had to get out of the way before it attacked! I shrieked and jumped backward.
The teacher ambled over to see what was wrong. “Oh, I guess it wasn’t pithed,” he calmly announced when I pointed in horror at its hand clutching the pin.
That was enough. I have no idea what the poor, unpithed frog’s beating heart looked like. I was too traumatized to look, and I’ve hated frogs and toads ever since.
My horror of small creatures continued, I’m ashamed to admit, to when I was a young mom.
My three kids and I lived in a small duplex ranch house adjacent to a field where new housing construction had begun. I’d been in “I-can-handle-it” mode for a few months as a newly single parent when I noticed mouse droppings in the bathroom. Why the bathroom, I’d never know. There was nothing tasty there. I considered what to do. I’d seen the bloody destruction of conventional traps, so I cleverly bought the new glue traps instead. No blood, right?
One morning soon after, when the older kids were at school, my three-year-old son reported a noise coming from the bathroom closet. He was the kid who always heard interesting noises, noticed and loved animals of all kinds, and picked up anything interesting. Every evening, I emptied string, nuts and bolts, acorns, animal fur, and tiny toy parts from his little blue jean pockets.
As he looked on, I opened the bathroom closet door to investigate. There, on the floor, stuck to the rectangular yellow glue board trap was a mouse. Still moving and squeaking for its life.
What I did next, I am not proud of.
But my son did like little critters.
I closed the closet door and invited him to go with me to the garage. I found a spade and carried it back to the bathroom. Then I said in as lilting and inviting a voice as I could manage, ”Look at the cute mouse! Shall we take him out to the garage?”
When my little son nodded, I handed him the spade and coached him into wriggling it under the mousetrap as the mouse squeaked and squirmed. I did kind of help him balance the spade, so the sticky trap wouldn’t fall off as we hustled through the apartment and out the garage door. Then I took the spade and dumped the mouse and trap into the tall plastic trash can.
It was wrong. I know it. I’ve felt bad about my cowardly behavior for years. Luckily, my son doesn’t remember it … or has blocked it.
I’ve had several other encounters I’d like to forget. Cleaning out a lakeside boat shed and finding a nest of mice who’d made winter beds in the kapok from life jackets. Stretching out on my new candy-striped shag bedroom carpet to read, only to find a dead mouse five inches from my face. Having one of my sixth-grade science experiment mice eat the head off his research partner in an apparent drug-induced frenzy. Grabbing onto the post between two horse stalls for balance as I slid a door closed and then finding a bat under my hand. Coming out of my office in the early morning to spot something dark hanging in the upstairs hallway after the furnace guys had used the attic access in my office. Walking through the garage service door on early mornings and turning back to see it covered with pooping tree frogs ready to eat the bugs the dusk-to-dawn light lured in.
Yep, I’ve had my fair share of shuddery encounters. No wonder I was grossed out by the freeze-dried frog in the doorjamb today.
Thankfully, my husband returned, looked at it, uttered a very bland “Huh!” and grabbed a paper towel to remove it with JUST HIS HAND. After a few minutes, I breathed more easily and stopped thinking about possible repeat scenarios. And now that I’m calmer, I can see one consolation for my many experiences and resulting fears. And for that, I will ever be thankful.
I escaped from teaching high school students, keeping this major secret that could’ve potentially created so much personal terror and totally ruined my teaching persona.
I hate frogs and toads, and I really hate mice and bats.
The errant slice of American cheese that ended up on the bathroom floor has baffled all investigators for more than fifty years. Its softened edges, missing corner, and sweaty surface reside far back in my brain’s mystery album. Not a single one of us four kids admitted to tossing it beside the gray porcelain stool and double-hung window on that muggy summer day.
Lined up, we all shook our heads adamantly and stood our ground. “It wasn’t me!” we chorused. “Who would take a slice of cheese into the bathroom?” (None of us!) “Who would eat cheese in the bathroom?” (Ewww, not any of us!) “Why would anyone fling perfectly good cheese on the linoleum floor when a wastebasket was only four feet away?” (Maybe one of us?) Was it an experiment? Was it planted there on purpose? Was it a joke? Not for our mother, who'd recently spent our father’s hard-earned salary on new-fangled individually-wrapped American cheese instead of the cheaper, off-brand loaf that peeled off in chunks. We’d gobbled it up. And promptly gone back to the loaf. Maybe the wilting cheese was a statement, a sort of physical review, daringly published for anyone who cared to stare down at the floor while doing their business: Individually-wrapped cheese is superior! Loaf cheese is only fit to melt on the bathroom floor! We may never know who threw the cheese. But I still wonder.
How did I ever do it all? How do any good teachers do so much? How do they hang in there in the long stretch from January to spring break? Giving, giving, giving– living, really— for their students to pass the holy spring tests?
Only two years ago, I was busy planning weekly lessons all day on Sundays, and spending the rest of the week teaching all day, grading work and revising lessons most evenings, supervising after-school study sessions, tutoring or attending meetings before school, preparing for professional development, as well as keeping the house moderately clean, spending time with family on Saturdays, and getting up early to write and revise a novel. Thankfully, my husband did all the laundry and most of the cooking, with the help of a succession of those popular meal delivery kits that save busy people from planning menus and shopping. Not surprisingly, my main regret at the end of my teaching career was giving so much to other kids and not my own.
Since then, my schedule has eased. I’m generally able to sleep as long as I like, and I don’t have the pressure of students wanting solid feedback on their work. I have written some college recommendations, done a little tutoring, and helped with some professional development, but the pressure is off. I finally have time for my adult kids, if they have time to hang out or talk.
My priorities are changing.
Being under the weather over the holidays and again in late January gave me plenty of time to think about how I want to spend my retirement days and months. After watching the few Hallmark movies with original plots from my sickbed, I was ready to take stock of who I am and where I’ve been.
A few times in my life, I purposefully pushed myself uncomfortably to make myself a better parent or teacher. I joined a church softball team with embarrassing results to prove to my daughter that it’s okay to do things you’re not good at. I became a member of a fiction writing organization and timidly stuck out my neck to submit short stories to their anthologies. I also agreed to give public presentations about my historical novel work, despite my introverted nature. These experiences made me more sympathetic to the challenges some of my students faced in the classroom, but they weren’t really for me; they were designed to benefit someone else. That’s pretty common for teachers who scramble for ways to make their kids successful.
But now, some people might say I’m moving into my Sage-ing years. That’s an actual thing for retirees to pursue: being a wise role model during retirement, a sage.
Others might say I’ve earned my free time, my retirement, that I don’t have to answer to anybody!
I’m starting to agree with the latter concept: I’ve done my part. I’m ready to experience more free time, even though I’ll probably never voluntarily park myself in front of the TV all day. (A book in hand on a rainy day, though, is another thing entirely.)
No, now that I have more time, I’m ready to choose activities to please or enrich myself, not to become someone’s role model and spew advice. I’m actively working to stop doing that!
And I’ve started! I’m in year two of piano lessons. I’ve graduated to the second book, and each week, we inch closer to the back cover. I can read both staffs, play several chords without looking at my hands, use the right pedal, and entertain myself with a few basic songbooks for a solid thirty minutes. Pretty cool for a person who just looked longingly, albeit cross-eyed, at simple piano music several months ago. I’m proud of my accomplishments so far, even if I have no desire to play in front of others.
And there’s more.
Despite my introversion with strangers, I’ve finally earned enough volunteer points to qualify for a double promotion up and out of my intern status as a Master Gardener. The time I spent with other gardeners has taught me about seed libraries, winter sowing, raising vegetables, native and invasive plants, herbs, and more. That time has also helped me hold my own- for at least a few minutes- when talking with my friends who are real masters at gardening.
Most importantly, retirement has allowed me time to get to know myself. Every waking minute hasn’t been devoted to planning and preparing and giving feedback to students. I’m focusing on me.
I’m learning to be a better work partner as I study my personality and tendencies. Just last week, I collaborated with my husband on TWO home projects. We worked SIDE by SIDE, not individually on parts of the whole to be combined later. During our work, I kept my directives to a minimum. And even though his ideas weren’t mine, both projects were successful. The twelve winter-sowing milk jugs are seeded and settled in the garden, and no one bled! The dog no longer can open the doors into the living room by tugging at the curtains, and no one bled!
It’s time for me to be a student … of what I want to learn, what I need to learn to better myself, for me! Not what I SHOULD know by now. Not how to make a delicious pie crust or how to change the oil in the Kia, or how to fold clothes most efficiently.
Certainly not to be another kind of teacher!
Nope. I’ll settle for continuing my spiritual quest, seeing more of the world, and being as kind as I can be to others. That list is probably sufficient and plenty.
Yep, I’m gonna pass on the Sage badge.
Once again, I’m reading a historical novel. They’re my go-to in the Libby filters when I’m searching for a new online freebie read.
My setting preference is 1800’s United States. That’s probably because of the novel series I’m writing based on the diary of my Quaker ancestors during Reconstruction. Or the fact that I taught American Lit to high school juniors for many years.
This week, while skimming through Libby, I latched onto a novel about a famous American Romantic Era writer, one who generally captured the interest of even my most disinterested students. I thought I might pick up a few interesting details of his life from the book. It was available, so I borrowed it and began swiping.
No more than a couple of chapters in, I began to feel a little unsettled. After another several chapters, I had to stop reading. I just couldn’t tolerate it anymore.
Why did I return the book in disgust?
Historical inaccuracies.
It’s true that I read all of The Underground Railroad, a ponderous story that is predicated on the fantastical notion that a real railroad line dug below the mountains of Georgia and the Carolinas offered an escape to the runaway slave protagonist. I shook my head each time a new station was mentioned, wondering how many readers would come away wondering if the Underground Railroad really was a subterranean system, as a few of my high school students believed.
When the protagonist reached South Carolina and worked as a live prop in a museum dedicated to showing the injustices of slavery, while also being housed in a dormitory where the African American residents were institutionally sterilized, I sighed and set down my Kindle in irritation. Not that this kind of thing didn’t happen later and in different settings, but because historical events were being conflated. I eventually pressed on because of the positive recommendations of my book club friends. I confess, however, that I was not impressed with the book, largely because of the many inaccuracies. To me, it read like fantasy- not my favorite sub-genre.
So yes, I have a problem with historical errors in historical fiction.
The biographical novel I recently downloaded from Libby- one from a series proclaimed as “Biographies of American Authors” and published by its author, I later discovered– was filled with a different kind of historical problem. Its premise wasn’t based on historical inaccuracies. Rather, it was filled with anachronisms, facts and diction inappropriate for its era.
I try very hard not to read critically- as if I were grading the work or offering editorial suggestions— but after twenty-five years as an English teacher, it’s hard to put aside those tendencies.
Initially, the book focused on the setting: Boston in the early 1800’s, not particularly exciting as a narrative lead, but well described, so I continued. I could picture the city and general era that eventually narrowed to a theater, where the action would begin. Within a couple of pages, the exposition shifted to a more explicitly narrative form with dialogue between a couple of characters. Unfortunately, the conversation felt off.
At first, I couldn’t put my finger on the problem, other than the tone and diction of the dialogue made me twitch. On a second read, I succumbed to my teacher-like reading mode and realized that the characters spoke in mostly three or four-word sentences, many of which were repetitive and almost comically simple.
“Oliver? What is wrong?”
“I have to tell you this.”
“Tell me what?”
“Constable Ross is waiting for you in the lobby.”
“The constable? What does he want?”
Nevertheless, I soldiered on and skimmed over the weak dialogue. I did think a good editor should have coached the writing in the basic rule of writing fiction- show, don’t tell, but I graciously allowed that the writer was a better expository writer than a dialogue one. I pressed on.
It wasn’t long before my twitching returned, not only caused by poor diction, but by suspiciously inaccurate content.
Two of the characters “went to preschool” together? In the early 1800’s? Hmmm.
“Fast food” vendors were gathered in the town square? Come on!
They played on the “monkey bars” at school? Very unlikely.
The constant anachronisms were starting to impede my interest in the story. Were these errors intentionally used to help readers make more connections to the era? Was it like The Message, an updated version of the Bible that uses modern language and allusions to make the original text more relatable?
If so, I wasn’t buying it. Still, I continued, if for no other reason than to see how egregious the errors might be.
Soon my twitching was accented by indignant huffs. My reading became an obsessive scavenger hunt. I had to know if a term or topic was used erroneously and how accurate my hunches proved.
Two boys were being pursued by truant officers in London in the 1820’s? Was school even mandatory at that time? Nope.
One of the boys was said to be a great detective with his hunches. Were detectives around then? No, not until 1842, when the London Metropolitan Police initiated a detective division.
The boy’s family returned to the United States, where he enjoyed playing rugby at school. Rugby? Really? No way. The first rugby game in the US was in 1874.
By now, I had a Google window open as I was reading. I even had the template phrase plugged into the search bar, ready to go; “History of ______ in America.” My pleasure reading was becoming a game of instinct and verification.
“Kissy- kissy?” Ha! “Kissy” wasn’t used singley until 1873, much less in a double form.
“Lay off the joy juice?” Ridiculous. “Lay off” is traced to 1880, 60 years after the setting, and “joy juice” wasn’t coined until the 1960’s.
By now, it wasn’t merely the inaccurate use of words and phrases that jumped out. Parts of the plot were suspect.
Back in the US, the teenage boy decides to become a poet with the encouragement of his friend’s mother. They read Byron, and she teaches him about syllables so he can become a poet. Okaaay. This kid has been learning Latin since he was four (in itself borderline unbelievable), and reading Shakespeare for years, but she is just now teaching him to count syllables in a line of poetry? Unrealistic.
Two years later, she finally teaches him about iambic pentameter, the most common metrical form and said to mimic the rhythm of human speech? Absurd! The kid had been reading Shakespearean verse, which is practically ALL written in iambic pentameter, for heaven’s sake!
True, most people might not catch these specific errors, but they would flash neon to an English teacher, and probably even jump out to many high school students today.
I had to stop.
No matter how compelled I felt to learn more about this famous American writer, now everything in the book was under my scrutiny. Furthermore, my reading Flow was impeded. The novel– and the writer– had no credibility.
My takeaway? If you’re going to write a historical novel, you must get the details right. Don’t assume that things have always been the way they are today. That’s silly. And lazy writing. Too many sources exist today for even a novice writer to ignore accuracy.
I get why the writer might not do research. Historical research is a challenge! Tracking down historical details, language, customs, and daily life has been a time-grab that I’ve faced as a writer. Getting it right slows me down, and sometimes, I veer off on a trip I never intended to make. But ultimately, it’s a positive challenge, one that will pay off.
Being historically accurate makes writers credible.
And you can bet someone out there will know if a fact isn’t correct. What writer would want to be called out for too many historical errors? I want my accuracy rating to land in the high 90th percentile.
So, no more “Biographies of American Authors” books for me, no matter how they end up in my Libby list. I just can’t suspend my belief and pretend this author knows what he’s writing about.
And, you can bet this lesson means I’ll be keeping that Google window open as I write.
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It’s February and my seed catalog browsing has ended. I‘ve decided to create a native perennial flower bed along a neglected side of the house and even have the seed packets in hand. Now it’s time to consider where each plant will spend the summer at my house.
Writing the names of the plants on slips of paper and pushing them around on grid paper is one way I’ve spent dark February days while dreaming of spring planting.
Creating a diagram of various plants in just the right places— and then erasing and moving them again and again— is another way.
But hearing so much about AI lately, I thought maybe I’d get some technological help.
A couple of years ago when I was still teaching and a few savvy students had discovered its burgeoning ability to write their English class assignments for them, I played around with AI to see what it could do and how well, so I felt moderately confident that I could make it work for me.
First, I asked ChaptGPT to create a spreadsheet of all the seeds I picked up at a recent Master Gardener seed swap. I entered the Latin name of each variety and listed the information I wanted the engine to create for me. I clicked Return and POOF! I had a spreadsheet with the name, height, color, date for winter sowing, transplant date, date of maturity, and height for all the packets spread around my desk. The result was perfect for thinking about their placement.
But could AI help more? If I wanted the most visual and olfactory impact and the heaviest bloom production, I’d need a design that factored in all the variables from my abandoned swath of ground and ten cultivars.
Some gardeners find that a rewarding part of gardening. I do, too, sometimes.
But the temptation was too great. Like a student running out of time to write that essay due first period tomorrow, I was lured back to ChatGPT.
I played with my prompt until I had all the conditions covered. Here’s what I wrote:
Design a 3-foot wide perennial flower garden in Zone 6a that runs east to west 30 feet with a two-story house on the north side and a six-foot privacy fence on the west side. Include the following cultivars in a design that will allow appropriate sun and spacing and produce an attractive display of colors with flowers from late spring through fall.
Then I listed all the plant names from my seed packets, adding them to the prompt:
Include the following plants: Aurinia saxatillis- “Basket of Gold;” Eurybiamacrophylla- “Big Leaf Aster”-white; Coreopsis Palmata- “Prairie Coreopsis”- yellow; Rudbeckia Triloba- “Brown-eyed Susan”- yellow; Liatris Aspera- “Rough Blazing Star-purple;” Ratibida pinnata- “Grey-headed coneflower”- yellow; Senna hebecarpa- “Wild Senna”-yellow; Paradiso Mix echinacea- mixed colors; Dahlia Varaibilis- mixed colors; and Tobacco.
Practically before I could take a breath, the program was spitting out its plan:
It began with an overview of “Key Design Considerations,” which is handy but also a dead giveaway when using it for academic writing. Included in this section were general points dealing with sunlight, spacing, height, and structure, as well as bloom timing, all of them related to the prompt I’d given.
The next section was titled “Planting Layout and Design.” It was divided into the “North Side,” “Middle Section” and “South Section,” noting the sunlight exposure for each. Under each category, the appropriate cultivars I’d included were listed along with their height and spacing. In addition, a justification for each placement was included, mentioning bloom color, height, pollinators, and how they contrasted or complemented nearby plants.
The last major section of the design plan was titled “Layout Summary (West to East).” It was broken into “Front Section (near fence),” “Middle Section” and “Back Section (near house).” In effect, it divided the three-foot-wide bed into three long rows. Three plants were listed for the three rows in each section.
Finally, the plan ended with a “Bloom Timing Overview,” with bulleted timing— spring to early summer, mid-summer, and late summer to fall— and each of the cultivars listed in the appropriate category.
Presto! Here it was! A plan with complete information about which plants would thrive best in which places and transform my blank slate into a pleasing and ever-changing tapestry of natural beauty.
Despite my joy, I felt a twinge of concern. I remembered some of the errors Chat GPT made in my students’ submissions. So I cross-referenced the plan with the information on the seed packets. They matched! It appears Chat GPT’s been learning to gather information from better sources.
Sometimes, though, old habits die hard.
Even staring at the comprehensive plan on my screen, I couldn’t resist pulling out a sharpened Ticonderoga and my garden notebook. Transforming the AI plan into a sketch with labels and general measurements helped my brain nudge the native perennial bed plan closer to fruition. Plus, I justified to myself, this AI-informed diagram could be a quick guide when I’d be on my knees in May, finally setting out my winter-sown flowers.
Theme determined, cultivars chosen, seeds in hand, and design created, I’m ready to pull out the milk jugs and get my winter sowing started.
Now, if I could just get a robot to plant, weed, and water, think how much time I’d have to arrange all those fragrant bouquets!
Mastermind,
I once was tagged
in my introverted days.
Arranging, calculating,
quietly driven.
Then Field Marshal,
planning, executing,
holding the torch,
urging my battalion
into victory.
Often Fixer,
eager to improve
any situation, to
declaw a beast, and
watch it smile.
Sometimes Seven,
grabbing every
random chance
for growth
to enjoy and share.
Always Educator,
savvy, motivating,
adept at shifting
and modifying
to meet varying needs.
Solutionist
Solving problems,
promoting confidence, success,
most often overtly;
sometimes by subterfuge.
But now, Sage?
“Let it go,” I hear.
“Let God,” they say.
“For we must all
walk our own paths
to learn and find peace.”
Relinquish
those polished roles?
Abandon the gifts
from and back to
our Higher Power?
Easier, I fear,
to transform
a plaid zebra
into
a devout monk.
Yes, I hear the voices.
And yet,
I am silently compelled
to seek and fix
and share the light.
My light.
Some might
call me
Controller.
I am starting to get over my Master Gardener imposter syndrome. I’m a teacher by training and vocation, so gardening has been a more recently developed hobby. But my knowledge is growing!
After enjoying a bouquet of cut flowers sent by colleagues twice a month during the summer, my husband and I talked about whether I could create a cut flower garden on the south side of our house. I’d love to have flowers for bouquets all summer, and my husband is tired of mowing the open space. So I’ve been paging through the seed catalogs for inspiration.
My inspiration has just come to seed.
Tending the herb section of the free seed station today at the Seed Swap boosted my confidence. Many of the herbs I’ve grown, so talking with visitors about them was fun. I legitimately answered lots of questions about where and how to plant them. And I learned some tips, too! A young man told me that spearmint keeps away some insects. When he asked me whether his sweetie could grow spearmint in her bedroom to get rid of bugs, though, I didn’t know. “People grow herbs in kitchen windows, so give it a try! And come back next year to tell me all about it,” I told him.
Then what a delightful surprise it was to find FREE native perennials at the very table where I worked today! Packaged for 2022, they were free for the taking. I browsed through them and chose several I thought I might use in my imagined cut flower garden. Combined with the other packets I already had, I’d have the makings of a lovely garden. Flowers for me all summer and limited mowing for hubby.
But when would they all flower? And how would ensure that they don’t end up a weedy mess with the tall ones in front and the short ones in the back and none getting the right amount of sunlight? And what about coordinating the colors? I’d surely have to do some serious chart-making based on their labels.
What a minute!
I read online that someone used AI to make a spreadsheet for their garden planting. What a great idea!
As a teacher, I lived through the ChatGPT Beta year, busting several high school students who were not yet sophisticated enough in their prompts to fool me with the results. It was a major hassle, and I came away with a strong distaste for AI’s composition ability.
But for garden planning purposes? Heck, yeah!
So I entered my prompt, starting with the elements I wanted to know about each variety. Then I typed in the Latin names of each seed from the packages. I made one revision, adding the common name and the precise zone.
Make a spreadsheet for Zone 6a that includes the following elements for 2025: Latin name, common name, perennial or annual, date to winter sow, plant spacing, date to transplant, date of maturity or bloom, sun exposure needs, color, and height for the following seeds: Liatris aspera, Ratibida pinnata, rudbeckia triloba, coreopsis palmata, Senna hebecarpa, and Auinia Saxatilis.
POOF! I now have a lovely chart that tells me when to plant, how tall each plant should get, its color, and its time of flowering.
Now, some of the information on the spreadsheet isn’t exactly correct. That’s one of my gripes with AI in the classroom. It functions by crowd-sourcing information, and we all know how accurate crowds can be. In this case, for example, my seeds are for Grey-headed Coneflower, but the chart calls it yellow coneflower.
But none of this information is life–threatening, so I should be able to sketch out a beautiful flower bed that blooms all summer through late fall.
Or, wait another minute!
Maybe ChatGPT could even design it for me! Could ChatGPT tell me where and when to plant each of the seeds for optimum viewing and blooming? I’d have to do some measuring of the space available, but this could be cool! I could even ask it what kind of soil is best for each cultivar. I’ could have the best-looking flowerbed in the neighborhood!
Then all I’d have to do is remember to water them when we have a dry spell!
Hmmm … could AI do that?
I was exhausted. But my mind darted to one terrifying scenario after another. How far would a bullet penetrate through a clapboard cabin wall? Would I have a better chance of surviving if my bed were perpendicular to the outside wall? Or should I drag it longwise into the middle of the room?
My thinking wasn’t coherent, but I didn’t know it.
Three nights of patrolling the grounds with a baseball bat had exhausted me and filled my head with terrifying scenarios. Determined to stay awake and do my duty to the kids, just the night before, I’d taken eight No-Doz pills. I threw back the tiny pills in one handful with a gulp of water. But instead of being wired and ready to patrol the acres of campgrounds, I collapsed into the hickory rocker next to the massive fireplace.
I just couldn’t do it anymore.
Now, as per the schedule we’d arranged, tonight I was holed up in my half of the camp directors’ cabin to get a couple hours of sleep before midnight. That’s when I’d have to patrol the grounds. But my mind wouldn’t shut down.
At age nineteen, I was trying to keep a camp full of fifty-two elementary kids and their eight camp counselors calm and safe. How had it come to this?
I’d spent three summers working at this all-girls camp, starting as a Counselor-in-Training on the waterfront and working my way up to direct the waterfront with Red Cross swimming lessons, boating and simple sailing instruction, and twice-daily free swim times. The camp still served mostly inner-city kids, but this year was different. Last year’s directors hadn’t returned– I didn’t know why– and we had a new, young director in their place. Their resignation was disappointing, as I’d gotten to know them well. Just a few weeks before camp started, I was recruited as Assistant Camp Director to maintain continuity. A college student, I was glad to have an increased paycheck and excited to make the camp experience memorable for everyone.
Instead, this season was turning out to be too memorable. More like traumatizing! For the past several nights, we’d had nighttime intruders on campus who were hell-bent on terrifying us all. And they were succeeding.
The older kids knew that prowlers had been on the grounds three nights in a row. These were street-savvy kids, even though they were all under age 14, and the gossip had spread like green algae on the lake in a scorching August. By breakfast, they all had heard Latisha’s story: she and a CIT had been chased by a ghost on her late-night trip to Moonbeam, the name of the shower house. The CIT, Brownie, wasn’t sure what she’d seen. But she didn’t want to hang around to find out. The girls had never run faster. Luckily, they’d already done their bathroom business.
Pinkie, the twenty-five-year-old first-grade teacher hired as camp director, had already retired to her end of our cabin that night. But our tiny waterfront director, Waves, and I were still up late talking in the lodge about her upcoming Water Olympic games.
We bolted outside when we heard the girl’s scream.
Nothing looked amiss under the moonlight that spilled from behind dark clouds onto the open field beyond the big oak tree. Three weeks ago, we’d posed underneath its spreading branches for the annual staff picture, the counselor excitedly dreaming of learning to sail the little Sunfish, singing campfire songs, and making memories for a lifetime.
Instead, we were scanning the grounds beyond the lodge, all the way to the property line of heavy brush and trees along the road. Was someone hunkered down in the thicket watching us? Were they trying to scare us? Was it just a joke? Whatever it was, we all were rattled.
In the morning, Pinkie delegated the task of calling the Y to me, “the experienced one.” When I finally got through to our boss, I was promptly dismissed. It was probably just a joke we’d taken too seriously.
The second night made things worse. During our patrol, one of the counselors caught a glimpse of movement across the sports field. The intruders must’ve seen our small group coming closer hefting baseball bats. The strangers took off in waves of white, and I rushed back to the lodge to call 911.
By the time the sheriff’s deputies arrived, we just looked like some scared kids. And that was exactly what we were.
“Looks like everything’s okay,” the deputy observed with a bemused smile. “We may not be here right away, but you can always call if you need us.”
Were we overreacting? His nonchalance made me feel like we were the butt of a joke everyone else got but us. Chastised and embarrassed, we all slogged back to our cabins and spent a restless night.
The next morning, the campers were occupied with their class rotations, swimming lessons, land sports, and crafts. But I slumped across the camp store desk, trying to focus during one more counselor tirade.
“Why won’t anyone listen to us?” Pip, the sports counselor, yelled. “All the counselors are scared to death.”
I looked at her through blurry eyes. “You heard the sheriff last night. There are only two deputies for the whole county. They can’t always get here fast.”
“Well, someone could be dead by the time they arrive. And I tell you what: it’s not gonna be me. Those creeps could have guns under those sheets. I’m done!” the girl spat, and then she whirled to leave.
“Wait, Pip. Can’t you hang on a little longer?” I pleaded. “Pinkie said she’d try to do something today.
She stopped by the pop machine. “Oh, yeah? Where was she last night when we all were walking the grounds?” Pip demanded. “She’s supposed to be the camp director! She was asleep until the cops got here, wasn’t she?”
I shrugged. “She promised to call the Y this morning.”
“Didn’t you already do that?” Her eyes narrowed.
“Yeah, I called after the first time. They didn’t think it was a big deal. They thought it was a prank.”
Hands on her hips, she said. “A prank! Hmph! Who knows what would’ve happened if I hadn’t had that baseball bat.”
“You’re pretty scary with a bat!”
The girl smirked and flipped her long braid. “Well, I was on the softball team.”
I half-smiled. “Can you wait ‘til Pinkie makes the call, Pip? Can you talk to the others? Calm them down?” I asked, my mind racing. “For now, if we have to, we’ll plan to keep all the kids in the lodge at night. We’ll call it… a… a slumber party.”
“Like that’ll fool the older ones,” Pip snorted. She looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. “I’ll see if I can find more bats.” She adjusted her visor and headed to the equipment shed.
She was right. We weren’t fooling anyone.
The day dragged by even with the silliness and competition of Waves’ Water Olympics down at the lake. But the counselors were on edge, bickering about which cabin earned the most points. That evening, when the two little girls fumbled the flag-folding ceremony, older campers snickered and one of the CIT’s made a cutting remark. Our carefree summer mood had evaporated.
Finally, back in my side of the directors’ cabin, I shoved aside the persistent thoughts of bullets and fell asleep on my bunk. I was exhausted. Around 11:00, before it was my turn to patrol the grounds, Pip and her CIT Sweetie Pie began banging on my cabin door and yelling.
I grabbed a hoodie, slid into my sneakers, and hobbled to the door, tripping over my untied shoelaces.
“The kids are in the lodge,” Pip exclaimed breathlessly, a baseball bat on her shoulder.
Sweetie Pie broke in, her voice high, “Someone banged the shutters on Potawatami. One of the girls said she saw a ghost through the screen.”
Pip admonished me, “I’m surprised you didn’t hear them; they were screaming.”
I shook my head to focus. I’d been sleeping like I’d been hit by a bat. “Did you see anyone?”
Pip said, “I just saw something white fluttering as they ran toward the fence row. Then we took the girls to the lodge. Waves is still there.”
“Great, “I muttered to myself.
Just as I ducked into my sweatshirt, two more CITs rushed up out of breath.
“Did you see them?” one asked, her face flushed.
“Who?”
“The people in the sheets. They were by the lodge, at the back door, when we came to get a pop.”
Radar, the older one, hefted an aluminum baseball bat. “I threatened to swing, and they ran.”
“I’ll go call the sheriff,” I told them. “Pip, can you all go check the other cabins? See if everyone’s okay? Take them to the lodge if you need to. And I’ll get Pinkie.”
She nodded, and the three CIT’s followed her. Angry, I rapped on Pinkie’s bedroom door. Why did this fall on me? It was her responsibility.
After a groggy “What?” the young woman came staggering out in her fuzzy cat-print bathrobe.
“I’m going to call the sheriff. It happened again,” I hissed. She nodded her head and pulled her bedroom door closed.
I watched her trudge outside to the picnic table under the dusk-to-dawn light and sit. She yawned and wrapped herself closely with her bathrobe. I was back in no time and disgusted. When the CITs returned, Pinkie stood up and hugged Sweetie Pie, who was close to tears. She glanced away from Pip who stood glaring with her hands on her hips. We waited for the sheriff in silence.
A deputy drove up the gravel drive twenty minutes later. We met him as he got out of his car. “Who’s in charge?” he asked.
Everyone looked at Pinkie. She reluctantly got up. “I’m the director, but I don’t really know what happened.”
Then the others chattered all at once, trying to tell the man about the intruders, the shutters on the cabin, and the campers being afraid. But once again, he waved his hand and dismissed it as a prank. “Probably just some local kids.”
“But who’s going to stop it?” I pushed back. “This is twice now. The campers are terrified. And some of us are pretty shaken up, too.”
“Probably just some kids having fun. I doubt they’ll be back tonight,” he said, turning back to his car. “I’ll turn on the lights, in case they’re still around,” he offered.
Fun! This was nothing like fun, for any of us. The sheriff’s lights spun around creating grotesque red and blue ghosts dancing on the tree trunks.
The CIT’s whispered, making plans for their parents to come to pick them up. The older counselors didn’t even try to talk quietly. They debated which cars would best hold all their belongings.
I couldn’t blame them. But how could I get people at the Y to believe that we were terrified? They were two hours away, and it seemed like they didn’t care. Meanwhile, I was in the middle of a mess with no one else interested in taking charge.
Pinkie just looked at me. Shaking my head in bewilderment, I said, “Go on back to the lodge with the kids now. I’ll get my sleeping bag and come over, too.”
“I’m sure it’ll be okay,” Pinkie said, patting Sweetie Pie’s back. Then she tightened her robe belt and turned to the little path to our cabin. I wasn’t in the mood to argue about whose job it was to sleep in the lodge.
The next morning after dozing again all night in a rocking chair with campers asleep on the lodge floor, I was haggard and furious. It was time for Pinkie to take some action. After all, she was the camp director. At least older– if not wiser. And making twice as much money as I was.
I found her in the kitchen, calmly sampling the chicken noodle soup the two gray-haired cooks were making for lunch. No talk about last night. No mention of anything unusual.
“Maybe a little pepper?” Pinkie suggested after slurping from the spoon.
“Kids don’t generally like pepper,” the woman from the neighborhood scoffed. Her elderly coworker cast a sideways glance at me and frowned. Over the past three weeks, I’d surmised neither cook had much use for this year’s director who spent most of the day in her cabin, the only time the two cooks were working.
As I stood watching, my fists tightened. Pinkie’s sampling soup when the campers could be in danger and the staff is ready to quit! What kind of director is she?
“I need to talk to you. NOW!” I barked, motioning to the storeroom where the rotary pay phone hung on the wall. “Do you understand that your staff is about to leave?”
Pinkie stood facing me, her eyes wide open and mouth silently agape.
“Do you know that we’ve had white-robed intruders roaming the grounds for three nights in a row?
She just stared blankly.
“Well, do you?” I demanded.
“What am I supposed to do?” she whined, rubbing her hands together.
“You need to call the director at the Y and tell him what’s happening. You need to demand that they send some security– a man, someone to patrol.”
“But you talked to him yesterday, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did, and he didn’t believe me. Now it’s your turn. You’re the camp director.” I pointed at the pay phone.
“Okaaaay,” she said, her eyebrows raised and backing up. “I need to think about what to say. I’ll call later.”
“No, now!” I said, blocking the small doorway.
Pinkie took a step toward the phone, picked up the receiver, and dialed “0.” She read the phone number of the Y penciled on the wall and told the operator her name. “Reverse the charges, please.”
Once she had the director on the line, I tried to follow their conversation. The gist was that the agency would work on finding someone to help. We needed to tough it out for one more night.
I stepped closer. “Tell him the staff is leaving,” I urged her. “Ask how they’re going to get all these kids home.”
Pinkie waved me off as she listened.
Finally, she pouted into the phone, “Well, if everyone is leaving, I’m not staying. It’s not safe.”
What? If she left, what would I do with all the campers?
Pinkie slammed the receiver into its hook. With a toss of her head, she announced, “I’m packing,” and she stomped out the back door.
I slumped over onto the freezer. Now what? My mind whirled with worst-case scenarios. Pip mentioned a gun. What else might be under those sheets? I took a deep breath. One more night! What could I do? The truth was I was as scared as anyone else. I was in way over my nineteen-year-old head.
In that moment I learned that no matter how old you are, sometimes you just need your mom. I picked up the receiver and told the operator to reverse the charges.
Feeling totally foolish and incompetent, I closed the door so the cooks couldn’t listen from the other room. I told Mom what was happening. She promised to send some help. I sighed and felt my shoulders relax, as I hung up and reached to open the door.
Some movement outside caught my eye. Through the tall windows, I saw Pinkie stuffing her VW Bug with bags of clothes and bedding. She shoved a box fan in last and then slid into the driver’s seat. Without a word to any of us, she steered her green Beetle down the driveway.
Without her, the morning continued, just as the schedule dictated, with campers swimming and crafting and moving on to softball on the wide sports field. No one missed Pinkie at lunch, not even the counselors.
As everyone slurped chicken noodle soup and ate grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, my older brother walked into the lodge—my burly, athletic brother– with his girlfriend Jill. We often were at odds with each other, but today, he was my long-lost best friend.
He must’ve seen the exhaustion on my face. “We’ll patrol the grounds tonight, so you guys can sleep,” he told me. “The folks will be up tomorrow.”
I nodded my thanks. With so many kids around, I didn’t ask if he had a gun, but I hoped so. Either way, I felt safer with him there.
As the campers milled around before their after-lunch bunk time, I asked the counselors to come to my cabin for a quick update. “My brother Brian’s here. He’ll patrol tonight. Nobody’ll mess with him.”
Their sideways looks and nods at each other were reassuring.
“And Pinkie’s gone,” I added.
“What!” shouted Pip.
“Figures!” Waves said, shaking her head in disgust.
“No way!” Brownie muttered.
“If we can just get through tonight, tomorrow anyone who needs to leave can,” I said. “The Y is sending up help in the morning. Can you do that?”
Was that even a fair thing to ask? I didn’t know. But what else could I do with fifty-two kids to supervise? At least we’d get a better night’s sleep with Brian here.
They looked at each other, and then several nodded.
“Let’s keep it quiet, though. Definitely tell the other CIT’s, but the campers don’t need to know anything. Just that we have a new security guard.”
It seemed to be enough. Waves hugged me on her way out the door, and I bit back tears of gratitude.
Out near the flagpole, Brian’s presence charmed the campers, who mostly thought he looked like a movie star. A group of about fifteen little girls swarmed around him like bees.
“He’s our security guard?” they asked in breathless voices, as I shooed them off to their cabins.
“Yep,” I assured them and then sighed. Girls had been reacting that way for years.
The day progressed according to our normal schedule, with campers shyly waving to Brian and Jill whenever they passed. After the evening flag ceremony and vespers, the campers trotted down to Moonbeam and then settled into their cabins. The counselors followed. Gratefully, we all passed out and slept like logs. Nothing happened.
In the morning, I was up early and antsy.
The day started as usual: breakfast, camp chores, cabin clean-out, inspection, and then classes. I said goodbye to my brother, hugging him for the first time I could remember. When all the campers and counselors settled into their lessons, I sat backward at a picnic table watching the swimmers in the lake below. My mind was fuzzy. How had I let this get to be such a mess? I bit my bottom lip to stop it from quivering.
Late morning, I heard tires crunching on the gravel driveway. Dad’s big blue Caprice pulled up and parked on the grass. My parents walked between the tall pines in front of the lodge and found me. I stood and dissolved into tears as my mom reached out to hug me. “Let it out, babe,” she crooned, as Dad stood by helplessly. “Do you want to go home?” she asked, patting my back.
Dad quickly intervened. “I know you feel bad, but you need to stay. Finish what you’ve agreed to do.”
I looked from one to the other and burst into shaking sobs. Dad backed away and pulled out his pipe. Mom could deal with me. He was out of his element.
At the sound of the camp bell, a group of towel-wrapped campers noisily came up the stone steps from the waterfront and gathered around us.
“Hank,” Mom said, nodding toward the kids.
“Come on!” Dad invited them. “Let’s take a tour of the camp! Fall in line!” and he let out a few puffs of pipe smoke.
As if bewitched, the campers fell in behind him like rail cars and snaked around the camp, stopping at the commemorative boulder to read its plaque. “What’s this?” Dad asked. Several girls talked at once.
Was that my dad herding kids as if he’d been the teacher in the family for the past fifteen years? Everything was confusing. I shook my pounding head. “I don’t know what to do,” I stammered.
Mom motioned me to sit beside her. She listened as I told her more about the intruders and about Pinkie leaving me to carry on. “I don’t want to stay. I’m so exhausted.” I hesitated. “But I know it’s my responsibility…” I sniffled and wiped my nose on my t-shirt sleeve. “I don’t know what to do,” I trailed off.
“It’s your decision, babe. The Y is sending up people to help. You should do whatever you need to do, not what Dad or I say.”
Why did it have to be so hard? Why couldn’t she just tell me what to do?
Just then, coming up the waterfront steps, a group of stragglers in wet bathing suits pointed and shouted, “It’s Skipper and Scamp!”
I looked behind me to see the old camp directors and several teenagers piling out of two cars. A half dozen or so of last-year’s campers raced to hug the couple. Apparently, they were the Y’s solution to our problem, but I was confused. Where was the security guard we’d asked for?
Pulling themselves away and urging the kids to hurry to their next class, the couple made their way to our table. Skipper said, “Heard you were having some problems. We’re here to take over.”
Take over? Okaaaay. Was there something I’d missed? I’d never said I was resigning.
Scamp softened the news. “We’ve brought plenty of help, so if you and your counselors need to leave, we can handle the rest of the week.” She smiled and stepped away. I recognized a few of the young women, some former camp staff, who stood chatting a few paces away.
I looked at Mom and shrugged. “I guess that answers the question. I’m not needed, so I’m not staying.”
By the time the lunch bell rang, I’d talked to the counselors. No one else wanted to stay. Between my folks’ and the counselors’ vehicles, we all could manage rides home. So as the kids splashed in the lake during their afternoon free swim, we loaded the cars. The new staff took over, joining in the lakeside merriment.
A couple of weeks later, we received our paychecks in the mail, full pay, but empty of thanks. No one who wasn’t there seemed to understand what we’d been through… or cared. The camp season ended as if it was just another year. No mention was made of people in white sheets terrorizing the staff and the campers in the dark of night.
Our lives went on.
It was forty-some years later that my Aha Moment! came.
But it was only because of a friend’s childhood experience with people dressed in white sheets and burning crosses in the middle of her Indiana neighborhood.
“At least half your campers were black kids bused in from the inner city to the lake region?” she asked. “And the campers and staff were terrorized for several nights by people dressed in white sheets?’“
“That’s right,” I nodded.
“Doesn’t that add up to something ugly?” my friend asked.
Finally, it clicked.
How could I have been so dense, or naive?
