It’s officially midnight, but I’ve already set our clocks back for the end of Daylight Savings Time, so they say it’s eleven. This is the weirdest thing, the fact that we can all-of-a-sudden lose an hour, gain an hour like magic. Now you see it, now you don’t. Presto chango.

What time is it really?

Now.

This afternoon I worked more on my photo organizing project and began sorting my summer camp pictures, which–thankfully–are already fairly organized by year. So now it’s just a matter of grouping everything together and figuring out where the “strays” go. Wow–summer camp. Where do I even begin? This was the place I spent my summers as a child, the place I returned to as a teenager for my first job. For nine summers–nine summers!–I drove from Van Buren, Arkansas, to French Camp, Mississippi, to make terrible money and have an absolute ball doing it. I sang songs, participated in ridiculously silly skits, slept in a cabin, got bitten by countless mosquitoes, taught canoes, and formed friendships that have continued to this day.

After four full summers of working at summer camp (from 1997-2000), I went back in 2001 to visit and got willingly sucked into working for a week after one of the counselors contracted Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. As it turns out, the tick that bit this fellow forever changed the course of my life, since after I filled in his spot “in the cabins” for a week, I got invited to fill in for another week for one of the guys who worked with the rafters, the older kids who get to leave the base camp to go whitewater rafting.

As being a rafting counselor is a coveted position with little turnover, I jumped at the chance.

That particular rafting trip–honestly–was hell. It was me and one other counselor, who was also new to the rafting program, and ten teenage boys. Eight of them were from Memphis, and seven of those eight went to the same school. In other words, the other counselor and I were outnumbered from the beginning. Those seven boys cleaned our clocks. Hell, during the first day of our being on the road with these boys, one of them busted a window out of our van (after which it promptly started raining–thanks, God), and another one, in the middle of the night, threw up ALL OVER the inside of his tent and (in an effort to stop throwing up inside the tent) threw up ALL OVER the three pairs of shoes OUTSIDE his tent.

And since the other counselor was a sound sleeper, guess who got to clean the entire mess up?

The whole week was like this.

Still, I fell in love with these seven boys, and that fall I bought a ring with waves on it to remember our trip together. I still wear it. For years after that summer, I’d drive to Memphis to watch these boys play football. Their parents let me stay with them. “You’re always welcome here,” one mother told me. I was there for their graduation. A few years ago, when one of them got married, I went to his wedding. He’s turned out to be such a wonderful man. After his reception I ran into him and his wife in the lobby of The Peabody Hotel, and he said, “Marcus, no matter how long we go without talking to each other, I’ll always love you.”

Looking at this old photo is like turning back time. In an instant, I’m there. Presto chango. So many camper names and faces I’ve forgotten (they say you remember the angels and the demons, and it’s true), but with this group of boys, I remember every single one. (Maybe they were all angels or demons?) Anyway, this one had his gallbladder removed, that one liked to golf, those two were cousins, and that one could quickly and easily spell any word backwards.

The entire week I was SUC-RAM.

I didn’t take any rafting trips in 2002, but I did in 2003 (and 2004, 2005, and 2006). However, before that summer in 2003, the camp said it would help if I got my commercial driver’s license (CDL), since they normally transport the boys with a school bus and not a van. So that’s what I did. And I don’t know, I realize it’s random and that I don’t use it anymore, but it’s one of things I’m most proud of, the fact that I can drive a bus.

Because seriously–it’s way fun.

Here’s a picture I love from 2003. These boys went to the same school that those original boys (the seven) went to. Believe it or not, they were much calmer. No broken windows. No vomit.

Obviously, looking at these old photos brings back a lot of good memories. Still, for all that these photos DO show–me on a canoe, me and another counselor with pantyhose on our heads, me and a bunch of teenagers in life jackets, me and a school bus, and three boys playing frisbee–I’ve been thinking today about what they DON’T show. For example, tonight’s featured photo was taken on June 28, 2000, my parents’ wedding anniversary. Except while I was floating on Lake Ann in a pair of silly sunglasses, my parents weren’t celebrating–because Dad was still in prison. At that point, he’d been gone almost five years.

It’s the strangest thing when you have a parent in prison. It’s a sensation you can’t capture on film. Because it’s not like they’re dead. Even as an adult, I can’t imagine that. But they are GONE. And sure, you get to talk to them on the phone (for fifteen minutes at a time) and you get to see them in a visiting room (while armed guards watch), but they don’t get to SEE YOU. What I mean is that they don’t get to see you off to your first job at summer camp or help you pack the car. They don’t get to see you graduate from high school. They don’t get to see you learn to dance.

There’s SO MUCH these pictures DON’T show. I remember one gorgeous child who loved having his picture taken as a kid but hated having it taken as a teenager because–by then–he’d decided he was ugly. Another boy who was adopted told me, “My parents leave me at summer camp so they can go on vacation without me.” One of the original rafting boys had a brother who had died. So much insecurity; so much pain.

And all this before fifteen.

Fifteen. That’s how old I was when Dad went to prison. I was fourteen when he got arrested. My sister and I were in the living room, and we watched it on the news. Looking back, I have no idea how I survived. My therapist says I could have easily ended up addicted to drugs or in juvenile detention, and yet I didn’t. Instead, I ended up at summer camp. And when I started working with the rafters, I really didn’t think about the fact that they were basically the same age I was when the shit hit the fan. I didn’t think, He reminds me of me, or, I wish hadn’t grown up so fast and that I were as carefree as he is.

I just knew I cared about them.

Now it seems so obvious, that I was giving those boys the time and attention that I missed out on, the love that I desperately wanted and needed. But I didn’t consciously understand this at the time. Rather, I simply knew that I was capable of listening, capable of getting in a car and showing up, and capable of simply being there, and that for some reason I had to. Not like I was being forced to, but like I was being compelled to. Like something deep down inside of me knew that if I could listen to, show up, and be there for someone else, I’d one day learn to listen to, show up, and be there for myself. Now I know that this is when healing really happens, when you become your own home. And what a beautiful thing about The Mystery, about that part of ourselves that insists on healing, that everything we give away eventually comes back to us.