We agreed to rendezvous for a weekend in Washington, D.C.  Forty years and a few husbands later, our faces creased with the marks of our travels and our bodies not quite sculpted with the finesse of youth, we summoned all our courage and hope to attend our fortieth anniversary mini-camp reunion.

I say courage, because who knew what we would find when we met. After all, memories are selective and surely subjective. What we pictured in our minds were images created through the lens of naiveté and youth. A lot had happened to each of us in those forty years since last we’d seen each other, and we all know that life changes people, if not Botox and Restylane.

We were the children of the 60’s whose characters were formed in the 50’s. It was after the War (II that is) and our parents wanted us to have it all. For ten summers we met in New York’s Grand Central Station and headed by train to the Berkshire Mountains for a summer of fun, sport, and color war on the Lake known as Whaley. Year after year we took that song-filled trip to Pawling, New York, laughed and cried together, shared the heartache of our very first crushes, pulled some pretty mean pranks on our less-fortunate bunkmates, and sang, sang, sang, and, as young girls do, sang some more.

Our personalities blossomed during those summers of creativity and competition.  We learned the importance of service, sisterhood, sincerity, spirit, strength. The seeds of our womanhood were sewn in those early seasons of our lives.

And then it was over; we were campers no more. We took our separate paths, fledglings embarking on our first solo flights leaving our bunkmates behind. We were off to discover what the world had in store for us. We would win some, lose some; we’d be smart, sometimes stupid. Whatever life threw at us, we had been lucky enough to have been given a strong foundation in those early formative years. This was the groundwork that would see us through the best and worst of times.

And then we were together again, the dimmed childhood memories coming back more clearly into focus. Our hearts had never let go of those important friendships of our youth. Being older and wiser both in years and experience didn’t stop us from quickly reverting to the kids we had been. As we had so many years ago on that train to Pawling, we laughed, we cried, we sang our favorite camp songs. We compared war stories and thanked our lucky stars for those extraordinary summers when we’d learned the life skills that would carry us through our journey. It was as if not a day had gone by -- no less forty years.

We decided that ours had been a unique time. We’d been trained to model June Cleaver, and then suddenly our idol became Betty Friedan. We threw off our aprons and tossed away our cookbooks, and Betty Crocker became that odd relative relegated to the attic. It had caused a great deal of confusion and our lives showed it. Was the price worth it we asked each other?

The answer was a resounding YES! One day our daughters and their daughters and all the daughters of the world would understand that there on the shores of Lake Whaley a bunch of silly pre-pubescent girls had learned their lessons well and found the spirit that would change the future for all women’s lives. Of course, we were not alone. After the war, women all over America found their muscle and began exploring opportunities outside of traditional paths. The result?  A woman of our generation could actually run for president, and maybe even win.

The weekend was over. Reluctantly we said our goodbyes having learned yet another lesson: there is hardly anything in life more comforting than old friends. We hugged and kissed and promised to see each other again soon . . .  hopefully to celebrate the victory of sisterhood —and surely to celebrate all the extraordinary gifts given to us on the shores of that Lake called Whaley.

~ Halli