Last week was Kanuga. This is a place in the mountains of NC that I’ve been going with my family since I was born – literally, my first year there, I was 2 months old and slept in a dresser drawer. Our family has history there. Lots of history. We keep track of who’s there each year, and there’s always some point when we flip through the old records and try to remember – why was I gone just for Tuesday two years ago? Oh right, I was at Creative Circus and in the middle of a quarter- with 3 classes on Tuesday, I managed to go to class and yet still be at Kanuga for most of the week. Three years ago my middle sis and brother-in-law were in Okinawa, so missed entirely. And five years ago my eldest sister and her family didn’t come at all, because she was eight and a half months pregnant.

But these are the exceptions, the times when other things got in the way – in general, everyone comes to Kanuga, every year, for the whole week. And why? Because it’s how we recharge, refocus, renew. We remember why we love each other, why we miss each other, what matters to us. We don’t have to worry about the stuff of daily life – cleaning, cooking, coming up with things to do. The dining room serves every meal, and though it may not always be what we would’ve chosen, it’s good and we don’t have to make it or clean up after it. The kids have activities every day – Baker Building for little ones, Youth Program, and then Kanuga Outdoors. There’s the climbing wall, and the lake, and hikes around the property. You make a new tie-dye every year – and those get passed down, so when I was in seventh grade, I had something ridiculous number of tie-dyed shirts – something like 14. As a kid, it’s awesome – there are other kids to play with, planned activities every day, and we always had the option of skipping program to read a book on the screened porch if we preferred. As an adult, it’s even better – the kids disappear during the day, coming back to the cabin with crafts and stories and scraped-up elbows. We all spend the evening together – going to the evening entertainment – a poet, the square dance, a musician, and if we’re not interested in it, we end up back in the cabin playing games. As kids, we loved the moment at the end of each night’s entertainment when we got a dollar to go buy a candy bar at the canteen, and now as adults, we still enjoy the one week where we all eat candy together at 9 at night.

Now we’re all back in our respective homes, but we have the connections and insights that we all gained over the past week to carry us through the next year until we get to do it again.