Day 1.
Right now I’m sitting in the doorway of my tent looking out through the birch trees, across the rippled surface of the lake. I can’t see a single building, telephone pole or vehicle. This place, where you dropped me off yesterday (remember that long, bumpy dirt road?) is my home for the next week. I’ve come here to be the Camp Arts Coordinator, which is just a long title for an adult who gets paid to play. All the other staff people have arrived, but the campers don’t come until tomorrow. We’ve chosen our camp names — nicknames we use while we’re here. It’s a tradition. I love the idea of shedding my everyday identity and taking on a new one. My camp name is “Chance.” That’s what I’m doing here, taking a chance. It’s a big part of how I live — relying on chance to show me the path. Think of it as a combination of luck and intuition. We also have Flash, Lucky, Bow, Hurricane, Spike, Lady, Rain, Dr. Seuss, Sunbeam… You get the idea. The other thing I like about camp names is that no one can assume our gender. (Except for Lady of course, and she’ll defy anyone’s assumptions right away.) I know I’m going to miss you, and you’ll miss me too. I think we’ll all do a lot of growing this week.

PS: I swam out to the raft this afternoon.

Day 2.
There are Christmas lights strung through the trees all the way from the dining hall to Tent City. The campers arrived this afternoon. Now we can say that camp has really begun. It was cool to watch the families arrive and drop off campers with all their gear. Remember, I told you this camp is for kids whose parents are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT for short), so some of the families have two mums, some two dads. I saw a lot of love as they were saying their goodbyes, the way we did when you were leaving me here. The point of this camp is to make a space for fun where kids can relax and know that no one is going to hassle them about their parents being different. They know everyone around them is totally supportive. There is safety here, for everyone, including me. Partly that’s because it’s camp, a place I’ve loved right from the first year I went to Big Cove Camp as an eleven-year-old — the age you are now, Thomas. I’m a bit surprised to find myself here again at forty-one, but it feels right. I’m remembering all the great things about being part of camp life. This morning it rained and we thought it was going to be wet when the campers arrived, but the sky cleared in time. My job during registration was to be a jester, welcoming everyone. I hung out near the parking area, with bells on my green sneakers, a slide whistle in my pocket and a basket of bean bags. I didn’t speak, but managed to get some shy boys into a great juggling game. You’d like them, Willy; I think they’re about nine, too. They didn’t want an adult to start asking questions or explaining everything. All they wanted to do was throw the bean bags really high. So that’s what I did with them. (Sometimes adults talk too much.)

PS: Before breakfast I’m going with Flash on the early bird paddle.

Day 3.
It’s almost midnight and I’m in my tent, writing by flashlight (that would make a neat postcard — a little dome tent lit up under the dark sky). I don’t know which batteries will run out of power first, the flashlight’s or mine. This morning at breakfast one of the Junior Leaders (his camp name is Leo) gave a demonstration of his weather forecasting rock. It has a piece of string tied around it, and he holds onto the string and lets the rock tell the weather. He said if the rock is wet, that means it’s raining; if it moves around a lot, it’s windy; if you can’t see it, then it must be nighttime. Everyone laughed. Leo gave a great performance. That’s another thing I love about camp — performance is encouraged and appreciated. Around a fire it’s even more magical. I guess because fire links us back to our ancestors. Humans have always done that — sit in groups around a fire. Camp is like a primitive society; it’s also temporary. The pain of goodbye is close to the surface here, and I find myself thinking about people I’ve lost. My very first camp friend — she’s dead now. And Jim, my big brother, who went to Big Cove before I did, who went to Boy Scout Camp with Dad (oh, how I wished I were a boy, too). He’s been dead since 1991. If nothing else good comes out of this experience, I will be grateful for the inspiration to reconsider and reconnect with my brother’s spirit. I haven’t told you enough about him. He would have loved this camp — everything about it. Maybe my being here allows his spirit to be here with me.

PS: Here’s a factoid for you: A research study found that LGBT youth are five to six times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers.

Day 4.
I went out paddling again this morning with Flash and a group of kids. Pale ribbons of mist were rising from the water and there was no wind. We startled a loon. I know these aren’t real letters (like the ones my father sent to me from all the different Canadian cities where he went to meetings or the ones Jim sent from Portugal, Greece and San Francisco). I’m not going to put stamps on them and send them to you through the mail. I imagine you reading them again, when you’re older, remembering that summer your mother went away to camp. Will you think of it as the summer everything changed? I think I might. The same way I look back on the year I turned eighteen, when Jim sent me the letter telling me he was gay. I wasn’t surprised, just glad he put it into words, so that it was a known fact between us, to be talked about openly. I think our parents were wise to let Jim tell me when he and I were ready. Same with his illness. By the time he told me he had AIDS, I already knew it in my heart. He had an amazing life, with lots of adventures and learning — did you know he went back to school to learn to be a lawyer? His life shouldn’t have ended at thirty-eight. I didn’t realize, until I reached that age, just how young it was. This morning I did a book-making project with the campers. I showed them how to stitch the pages together and gave them a bunch of coloured paper and fabric and glue and beads. Even the lifeguard made one. Each person created a completely different book. I hope they write things in their books. I hope they write about what it’s like here, what they’re feeling. What camp means. And I hope you’re having fun with your dad.

PS: Jim once told me that we don’t get to choose our sexual orientation, but we do have to figure it out. Then we have to figure out how to live it.

Day 5.
I had my picture taken with all the Junior Leaders this morning, when we were ready to head out on our overnight canoe trip. Then we paddled down the lake and set up our tents on a rocky beach. The air is full of mist. It’s strange, to be at camp and away from camp at the same time. Part of me wishes I were back there right now. How do we get attached to a place and a group of people so quickly? They feel like my family. They know things about me that might be secrets anywhere else. They accept and support and love me. That’s what families do, I think, when they’re working well. Some of the kids here have felt ashamed of their families. Society has told them their families don’t count. They’ve probably been teased, pushed around, put down or maybe just excluded. But here, they don’t have to feel ashamed at all. Here we set the rules we want to live by, rules that help us honour each person. It’s a mini-society that we form for a short time, and even when it’s over, when it’s winter and camp seems far off, we know it’s still out there, holding the ideals we lived by.

PS: It rained last night and we had s’mores around the fireplace. Lady sang for us.

Day 6.
The Junior Leaders and I have just taken the “after” photo — we’re all wet and dirty and sore and happy. One of the cooks made me café mocha and I was allowed to use the lifeguard’s shower. How sweet to be welcomed back this way. My air mattress felt heavenly after the hard, gritty beach. I used to be tough enough to handle five nights of canoe camping in the pouring rain. I’m getting soft. When we were growing up I never got a chance to go on a canoe trip with Jim. I watched him pack, trying to stay out of his way and get him to notice me at the same time. I must have been a real pest, or maybe a pet, to him, seeing I was ten years younger. I remember thinking he was so beautifully tall. He used to babysit me sometimes. Once, I threw up in my bed and Jim moved me over into our parents’ bed and I threw up there too. Poor guy. He also took me to Suzie’s Lake to go swimming and to the YMCA day camp when he worked there. He had a poster on his bedroom wall that said “Sock it to me.”

Factoid: I was four and my brother was fourteen in 1967 when Pierre Trudeau introduced the law that states homosexuality is not a crime.

Day 7.
I’m watching lightning streak over the lake. It’s beautiful and scary at the same time. I can’t believe today is our last full day. Everyone’s sad and happy — two different feelings at once, just like the thunderstorm. A short time ago I didn’t know any of these people, and now I can’t imagine living without them. There are so many things I have left to tell in these letters to you. The most important one is something I’ve known about myself for a really long time, but I’ve kept it secret, or let it stay hidden. I thought that was okay, the right thing to do. After this week, I know it’s not anymore. When I first considered coming here I wanted you both to come with me, to be campers. But someone said, “Won’t they feel left out, if it’s all kids of LGBT parents?” I wanted to yell out, “No. They won’t. They shouldn’t!” But it’s true. You would be different. All these other kids know about their parents’ sexual orientation, and they’re proud of it. I haven’t told you about mine, and in that way maybe I’m letting you think it’s something to be ashamed of. I’m bisexual. I haven’t told you before because I didn’t think it was something you needed to know. It’s easy for me to “pass” as straight. After all, I’m married to your dad. But now I realize I don’t want to hide anymore. I don’t want to keep it a secret. Your sexual orientation is about a lot more than just who you have sex with. It’s part of your identity, it’s who you are. And if I have to cover that up, I’m cheating myself and you. I want to be an honest role model. You might not notice a change in the way I look when you pick me up tomorrow (except for a lot of bug bites and some new scrapes). And you won’t notice a big change in the way I act, except maybe I’ll go to the Pride Parade next year. Even if you don’t read this right away, I’ll feel better knowing I’ve put all this into words so that you’ll have it when you’re ready. Will that be next month, next year, or after you’re grown up? I guess I’ll have to leave that decision up to luck and intuition — that’s why I call myself Chance, remember?I hear the dinner bell. Time for our closing banquet. Spike is leading a goodbye ritual — we’re all offering something to the lake. Tears, most likely. It will be wonderful to say hello to you tomorrow.

Love,
Chance (Mom)

Photo © Joanne Jefferson

Joanne Jefferson was raised in Halifax and now makes her home in West LaHave, Nova Scotia with her partner and their children. Educated at Acadia (BA) and Dalhousie (MA), Joanne has worked as a camp counsellor, a one-hour photo technician, a canoeing instructor, a copy-editor and a freelance writer. Publications including The Globe and Mail, Treehouse Canadian Family, The Coast, Visual Arts News, and Atlantic Books Today have purchased her work. Joanne’s poetry has been included in two collections: Letting Go: An Anthology of Loss and Survival and To Find Us: Words and Images of Halifax, and her story “Finding Mother” was selected by editor Emily Schultz for the anthology, Outskirts: Women Writing From Small Places. In 2003, she collaborated with dancers and musicians to create and perform “Ecstatic Domestic” at the Atlantic Fringe Festival. Her personal essays have reached audiences through radio on CBC (“Alice’s Diaries,” Out Front, March 2002) and in print (“Waking Up in Rogersville,” Write, fall 2000). She now contributes a regular arts column to The Halifax Herald. In June, Joanne will facilitate a workshop on sexual identity and family at the 9th International Conference on Bisexuality, in Toronto.