Estes Park of Memory

 We checked out of the YMCA camp after ten days---our longest visit there. I had scheduled such a long visit in March partly because I did not know when my sisters would be there, and we were not on sufficient speaking terms to arrange our normal arrangements which we used to make together. As it had happened I had guessed correctly for the first seven days, which was the first full week of August. I managed to have a brief visit with my middle sister her twin daughters, who are now in high school. I don't know when I'll see them again. It may be many years from now.

That first week of August, as we learned, is the last big week at the camp. After the second Sunday (the 8th), we still had three more days at our cabin, but the camp was almost deserted. So many of the kids had to return to school. It felt like it had the previous summer during the shutdown. In a way, it was much more pleasant, but I actually liked the activity of the people there. Ginger suggested that next summer we book for the second week of August. I agreed, but I said I might want to have a day or two to overlap the busy time. I feel cheered by the people and the families enjoying ourselves. Besides it might give one day or two possibility to see my nieces, whom I love. I doubt I will have much to say to my sisters by then. It is a sad time that way.  But life goes on. 

The last time we were all there together as a family was 2015. I remember on the last day there, seeing my father standing in the main lodge, by the window, looking up at the menu at the little cafe that is along the side of the big hall. I felt the aching feeling of the moment. He didn't notice me. I just felt the love for him. It is burned into my mind because it perhaps the last vibrant memory of my father that I have before he went into his final decline, starting only about a month later, and by the time I saw him again, flying from Portland to Colorado, he was very sick and within a few months he was gone.

Now it is just me by myself. I probably will not see my sisters there anymore. I will not strain things by attempting to see them. I will let them do their own thing. Perhaps I will never see them again either. It is not as if I have much chance to be in that area, without an explicit invitation to see them, which will not happen any time soon. 

But we will come back, at least for one for year to the camp, because my membership runs for another year, and also because I love it so much there.

There is something about Estes Park, I told Ginger, that invokes a connection to the past in one's life, of the times one has been there, and the shared memories. It is a special place that way. That is especially true of the YMCA Camp.