  My parents sent me to a camp every summer. The camps changed every year--there was the Girl Scout horseback riding camp (my favorite), the Bible retreats ranging from "pray before meals" complacency to tent-revival evangelical intensity, whatever camp a friend's parents were sending her to--but the elements remained the same.
Rainy days spent inside damp wooden cabins, ash and marshmallows in the same gooey bite, over-chlorinated swimming pools churning with Sharks and Minnows. I never spent more than a couple of weeks at any given camp, but I always made Friends 4-Ever. We would promise to write, send postcards, be the bestest friends always, but the friendships never outlasted the memories of creaky bunk beds and campfire ghost stories. I called my real best friend, Joni, last night. For the first time in our ten-year friendship, we live too far away to visit in a weekend. And life is busy and we work hard, we are tired when we get home, we have boyfriends who need our attention and cats for when we want to be alone, and other friends, and families who claim our vacations.
And we have the best intentions. It would have been easier, last year when I moved away from Joni, if I had seen my parents' station wagon filled with a suitcase and a Smurfs sleeping bag nestled against the back window. I might have known, then, what to expect. 
