My parents sent me to a sleepaway summer camp when I was six. I didn't understand where I was, I had no idea what I was doing there, like my dog, who didn't understand why she was suddenly unable to walk the city's streets without her paws hurting. I couldn't understand why I was thrust into a gray bunk, constructed of wood, somewhere in the country, sitting on a cot covered by a rough wool blanket, which tortured my sensitive skin, with seven other little girls I didn't know, who were not my brother, who, like him, didn't pay much attention to me when I was that age or any other. He disappeared when I was eight. I didn't know these strange little girls, I didn't know what strangers were, and the little girls in my gray bunk were not sensitive to me. But strangers have potential. I didn't know the two women who were our counselors, I didn't know what a counselor was, and, melancholy, I sat on the bed, observing this unfamiliar place, and miserably awaited letters from my mother who never wrote, because, she told me later, I didn't write her.
I don't remember the food at camp, but I remember walking to the cafeteria every day, passing the infirmary whose name was frightening, where I was told a girl of eight was being kept because she was very, very sick and wasn't allowed medicine by her parents, who were Christian Scientists. She might die without the medicine her parents refused her. All summer long, every day for eight weeks, we seven little girls walked in a straggling line past the infirmary to the cafeteria to eat our meals. I was the youngest, no one else was turning six at the end of that summer, so I was five, the youngest child in camp, where another little girl was very ill and might die because her parents did not believe in medicine, though it might cure her. I disdain religion, which some sensitive people believe can heal and redeem them, but I have no faith, though I was born into one, which I abandoned, although people can't abandon and he entirely through with anything into which they were born.
I didn't write my mother when I was away, because I didn't know what away was, I had only recently learned to print, and I didn't know I was supposed to write her since she was supposed to be with me. I also wasn't supposed to be in a gray hunk with small strangers and larger ones, counselors, who asked me to do incomprehensible things, like steal the pin from the other team in Color War. I didn't understand what Color War was, I had no idea what it was, and even though my older cousin was also in the same camp, but we were not in the same bunk, she never spoke to me about it, no one explained it. I didn't know Color War wasn't real, just as I didn't know that I wouldn't have to live in a gray bunk for the rest of my life, sent there by my parents who believed I should be there, the way the sick girl's parents believed she shouldn't take medicine and die instead.
I was afraid of dying and had many fears, like my father, but he never appeared afraid. He and my mother visited me once during the eight weeks, a visit I hardly remember, but there were photographs of the event in one of several shopping bags kept in a closet in the house where I grew up and which I loved but that was sold by my parents against my youthful protests. The photographs were meant to be pasted neatly into albums; for all those years, my parents said they should be pasted into albums, but they weren't and still aren't, though my father is long dead and my mother is old. My parents arrived at the camp with my fathers brother, my favorite uncle, and his wife, whom he divorced shortly afterward, to visit their daughter, my older cousin, who was supposed to be looking after me, but whom I rarely saw. Ever since her father died, I have not seen her; I never saw her again after my favorite uncle's funeral. My uncle's psychiatrist told him that the chest pains he complained of in the last week of his life were neurotic symptoms. Later, her family accused my father of not handing over all the money my uncle had in the business, owned by the two brothers. There was no other money in their textile business, none that was my uncle's, who liked to gamble, knew gangsters and fast women, and who had spent all of his own money, as well as money that was not his, since my father, incapable of denying his adored, neurotic younger brother anything, had lent him money from the business. My favorite uncle's family, only weeks after he was buried, turned against my father and treated him like a thief, but some years later, when my father was in Penn Station, his dead brother's son spotted him walking to the train, went over and offered an apology, which would never have been given if they hadn't been in Penn Station, by chance, at the same time near the same track. Penn Station may have been in the process of being destroyed then, to clear way for an ugly building that will also he temporary, and, unlike the previous building, it has nothing of beauty, grandeur, history, or maybe hope, and while the significant station, with its history, was obliterated and lost, my father and his nephew were likely oblivious to its demise, especially in that instance, when something of grave and appalling dimensions transpired between them. My father was being apologized to by his nephew, the son of his beloved brother, for something he had never done but of which he had been accused and that had caused him great distress, even despair, in the months and years following his brother's death. Without this accidental meeting, there would have been no letter or telephone call, no genuine consideration of my father who loved his brother and who was blameless in this situation, but not in all others. His brother's family, like most, believed they were right, sensitive, and caring, because of their religion and skin, and their need to feed, clothe, shelter and protect themselves.
Textiles is an ancient craft and one of the earliest manufacturing industries, and, in America, in the 19th century and later, many of the mills were situated in the North, in New England, especially Connecticut and Massachusetts, notably the city of Lowell. Cotton was shipped from the South to Lowell and other Northern cities, but in the mid-to-late 20th century the mills began to disappear, many small manufacturers disappeared, and textiles again came from the East, where they had originally come from and where now labor was much cheaper. My father often drove his gray Buick far away or traveled by train to the mills to speak to other men, other owners, about the material he and his brother designed, whose threads they selected, whose weight they decided, which would be transported to their office by truck, many bolts, all smelling of dyes and other natural and unnatural substances. My father loved his brother.
At breakfast, like the young married man, I would prefer not to talk, to ignore people, sit quietly, and eat my fried eggs, which are sometimes prepared over easy when I asked for medium, but I don't say anything. I would like to be still, or just quiet, and chew the eggs without a sound, because I dislike many sounds associated with eating, and sop up the toorunny part of the yolk with dark, dry wheat toast. Then I would prefer to sip my coffee and look out of the generous window and contemplate a spacious field where deer might be grazing. Seeing deer is always a happy surprise, though they usually run away, especially when you approach them, but if they feel safe and are in the distance, they might continue to eat grass or stand dumbly, with dark brown eyes, limpid and soulful as pathetic fallacies. Sometimes they leap across the field and over paths into the woods, their bushy white tails quickly disappearing into foliage, and the deer are always a welcome surprise. I have also, in that same field or near it, spied a mole, entirely unexpectedly, it was pointed out by another resident, who stood still and motioned me over to her, to witness this exceptionally rare sight. A mole has a tiny, well-articulated face, a longish snout, thick fur, like mink, that covers its small body, and it's not supposed to be walking on paths, but was lost or confused by an unseasonably mild winter, until finally it found its way back to its hole, though sometimes it scuttled around in circles. The hole was covered by earth, bits of wire, and a piece of thick, black denim, and I wondered where the moles had found it. Denim is often close to an American's skin, and once I wore it, but these days, unless pressed and unable to think of anything else, I don't, because it's heavy, and only the oldest jeans are soft and wearable, and I no longer have the pair I wore for years, which finally felt good. Many people around the world wear denim jeans, maybe because they're durable and also because they constitute a uniform, a classic, which has stood the test of time, though one day it may fail that. Denim is a stout, serviceable, twilled fabric made from coarse singles yarns. The standard denim is made with indigo blue dyed warp yarn and gray filling yarn, and denim is the most important fabric of the work clothing group, extensively used for overalls, coats, caps, but sports denim, also called faded denim, is lighter weight, made also in pastels and white and colored stripings, used for leisure wear, which is how most people wear it, though its association with work remains, since supposedly Americans play and work hard and have marketed this idea to the world. There is also upholstery and furniture denim.