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March 7, 2009 6:15 PM It's a small world (after all) :P  Have you ever had to try to make a food choice for someone else? Especially someone who is a picky eater? It's not an easy thing to do, unless you really know that person. Even then, it can be hard to predict the tastes of another. Such was the predicament I found myself in last night. As such, I was trying to find something that - even if Kristi didn't like it, it would be something I would eat. At ten O'clock there isn't much fresh food out in the store. Morning is by far the best time to get the most selection. I love fresh bread. When I worked at Sylvania there was a bakery up the street that always seemed to waft on over to our shop and we could smell the delicious aroma of hot-from-the-oven bread on many brisk mornings. I figured that the deli would probably yield the best options for an evening snack, but when I surveyed the display cases, all but about seven different items were put away and the empty silver pans were all that remained occupying the majority of the displays. A pretty young associate smiled as she greeted me. "Can I get something for you?" she asked. I began to inquire as to the length of time the samosas had been residing in the case. There was something very familiar about this woman. It occurred to me that I had been helped by her several weeks before and thought the same thing at that time. Could it be the same person after all these years? I continued conversing although I was paying no attention to what she or I was saying. Her face, her voice, even her petitness, it all seemed to fit the memory, so finally the curiosity was too great and I blurted out, "Are you Mandy?" "Yes," she replied. "Mandy Sullivan?" The look on her face answered my question, though I could tell from the same expression that she had no idea who I was. It had been fourteen years. Half my life actually. I hadn't heard from or seen anything of her for ages. In fact, I believe the last time I talked to her she told me she was moving to Venezuela with her dad. Mandy and I met each other at a summer kids' camp called Camp Chamisall along the Waiporous Creek somewhere North-West of Calgary. I actually went there on four different summers, but the week I met Mandy was by far the most significant. That was also the same week I met Julia Dyck, who through another series of small world connections turned out to be the sister of my cousin Jamie's best friend for many years Paul. I loved camp. The fresh air, the games and sports, sleeping in cabins, the food! They had some very good cooks at Chamisall. We'd go tubing down the Waiporous creek on gigantic tractor tubes, play wide games in this huge open field, shoot bows and arrows, even air rifles. There was all kinds of themed activities, hikes and day trips to nearby areas of interest, including a forest fire lookout tower from which you could see the tips of the ski jumps at Calgary Olympic Park. You build bonds with others your age during that week that can last a lifetime, and learn lessons that can carry you through some of life's most difficult moments. I remember at one point, sitting around the large bon fire they'd have for us each night it wasn't raining, and asking God to store that memory, that exact moment, in my mind forever so that I could always be reminded of it when times got rough. Do you think it's a coincidence that to this day I can still picture that evening as clearly as if it had been a week ago? A hundred kids' voices singing in unison against the dull roar of a warm, crackling fire under an endlessly stary sky, "Re...finer's fire... My heart's one desire... is to beeeeeee hooooly... Set apart, for you, Lord..." Very powerful moments. I think everyone should have the chance to go to summer camp. I'll never forget those days. And so it was fun to now be suddenly and unexpectantly reunited with someone else who was there that week, and mutually recalling details and threads of memories from that time. Since bumping into Mandy, I've been thinking a lot about camp and that week in particular. One of the things that stands out was that that parcicular week, Week 7 in 1995 was the first time I'd heard the Newsboys. The camp staff used to play songs from their second album, "Shine", throughout our activities that week, and so their music was permanently interwoven with the fond memories of camp, and I've always held the association between the two ever since. Songs like Shine, Spirit Thing, and Where You Belong (From their first album) bring me back to that place. We'd eat our meals around these round tables and one person at each table would be the table's 'slave' - usually determined by that cabin's scores in the day's activities. Actually, this was also where I learned the cup-tapping song — anyone from Pine Lake would undoubtedly recall me teaching everyone this. You start with a cup turned upside down and between clapping, tapping the bottom of the cup and various other hand manouvers, a repitious clatter can be made. On Wednesday, the middle of the camp week, we'd have Christmas. Everyone would get dressed up and there'd be a Christmas tree, complete with all the holiday festivities ( and even a mistletoe as I recall... ) Everyone would have a date for the Christmas banquet chosen by some absurd but random means earlier in the day, and troups of shirt-and-tie clad young men would make their way through the trees to the forbidden territory of the girls' cabins, one of the few times the gender lines were allowed to be crossed. A trail of cologne would linger behind them as they approached the cabin of their date for the evening, and the two would then walk arm in arm over to the mess hall. Another significant memory from camp would have to be titled Julia and the ice cream. During one of the meals I was sitting beside my new friend Julia who was refusing to eat any ice cream. Something about watching her weight (which I thought was completely unnecessary.) I told her that she was eating it one way or another, and held her bowl up to her mouth while she was stubbornly shaking her head with lips tightly pressed together in flat refusal. Persuasion was not working, and so in a final move of desparation I rammed the bowl right up her nose. (I was 14, and at that time it seemed a perfectly reasonable thing to do.) She sputtered and expostulated and laughed and complained several times over the rest of the week that she could still smell nothing but chocolate ice cream... And thus another camp memory was made. It was for that reason that when we got together several years later and went for a bike ride, our destination was an ice cream shop, for old times' sake. I haven't seen or heard from her in a few years either. I believe that was the last time I saw her, back in July of 2003 I guess I lapsed on my promise not to let another two years pass before we got together again, but who knows, now that I've run into Mandy, maybe we could have a little reunion! Well, I'm going to walk over to Kristi's coffee shop and get a coffee before they close. I've been confined to bed for most of this past week with the stomach bug the girls had. It's a doozie, very much like that one I had a few years ago while I was working at Shaw. Not fun. I think I'm over the worst of it now, but my stomach has still not quite returned to normal. Maybe some normal food might help persuade it. I'm going to go in to the airport at three this morning to help Kim ensure that all the computers and controllers switch over to daylight savings time smoothly. Could be a long night... March 22, 2009 6:51 PM Picture Time Several thousand words' worth      Kristi and I took the girls to Elbow Falls yesterday before the snow hit for a day of hiking in the mountains. It was the first time the girls had ever seen a waterfall.                 This afternoon seemed like the perfect time to make the best of our sudden snow dump and try some tobogganing.      All we brought was a couple of cardboard boxes, but another family on the hill was kind enough to lend us a crazy carpet.        BACK to Journal Index |