Summer can save a kid. One person can offer a child enough hope to hang on.
Being invisible is pretty hard for a kid. Crummy childhoods take many forms and usually it's an amalgam of awful. Smacks and screams thankfully have a time limit, but neglect is the evil gift that never stops.
Even the most benign neglect -- like being a latchkey kid -- can foster loneliness. When trouble fills a family, kids are pushed to the background. I lived in a land of my own imagining, where I believed my real parents, President Kennedy and Jackie O, had left me to fend for myself, testing a 'cream will rise to the top' theory. Meanwhile, by age nine, my beleaguered sister Jill was trying her sullen best to cook me supper.
If it hadn't been for the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies I doubt my sister and I could have ended up strong at the broken places. Our mom was a struggling single mother who tried to care for us, but she was young, and absent much of the time. Our dad suffered in ways we'll never understand, papering his sadness with drugs and then dying at 36.
But we had the summer! Through the magical generosity of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, we spent our summers at Camp Mikan, our paradise. We entered a bus somewhere in Manhattan's Lower East Side and came out of the bus blinking in the sunlight and breathing the sweet green air of Harriman State Park. Sunshine! Swimming! Friends!
Visibility!
In memory, it was a Wizard of Oz transition from black and white to color. At camp we went from unnoticed to the coolness of being all-summer campers. My sister became a big shot, a member of an envied clique, moving up the ranks of camp hierarchy until eventually she was head of the waterfront (only the coolest job in the world). I became part of a pack of safely rebellious friends who kept me going through the lonely winters.
We got to be kids.
I starred in Guys and Dolls. Jill gathered groupies! We hiked. Canoed. Short-sheeted counselors. Married counselors Shelia and Danny taught me I could be lovable, and through loving them I learned early on marriages could actually be good and safe and that race was a non-factor. Luke Bragg taught me to get up on stage and from being with him, through osmosis, I learned gay or straight made no difference.
We got to be kids.
Women ran Mikan. They taught Jill and I that women were strong and loving and firm and trustworthy. They taught us that is was possible to be protected in this world. Back home we were once again lonely, uncomplaining and obedient, waiting for the year to pass so we could again have a childhood. Summer came and once more we could swim, sing, mold clay, hit a ball, learn folkdance (I still dance the Miserlou in my mind) and unclench from being coiled watchers.
Doris Bedell, who ran the camp, shaped our lives more than she'd ever imagine. She loved us, she scolded us, and she made us feel seen. She probably helped my sister become the best teacher in Brooklyn. Her memory stayed with me when I ran a camp and community center in Boston.
One adult can change a child's world. Remember this. Think of who you can touch. Think of how you can help a kid have summer.
Thank you Federation of Jewish Philanthropies. Thank you for my childhood.