Michael and I invented Camp Remowas twenty years ago, when the kids went off to camp every summer. Money was tight in those days. (College was looming, weeks off work were few, and parents lived far away. We both worked two jobs, and relaxing vacations were few and far between.) One afternoon, I said plaintively, “Don’t you wish there were a camp for grownups? And that we could go there?”
Michael could have pointed out that we were on a beautiful walk through an apple orchard on a gorgeous summer afternoon. (We were. It was.) Or he could have pointed that places like Club Med and Sandals already existed, although our budget didn’t stretch that far at the time. Instead, he played along.
We modeled our imaginary camp in part on an old, multi-generation family camp of some friends, with separate cabins strung along a lake and a big hall for meals, talent shows, and games. Our camp, however, would have electricity and lightning-fast wifi. Even more important, it would have indoor plumbing. (No running across a dark field to an outhouse for me, thank you very much. Been there, done that, never want to do it again.) We would take a canoe out in the morning stillness, listening to the birds and the soft sound of the paddle. We would hike down a trail that descended alongside a rushing stream. We would sit by the lake with a book while someone else made dinner. We would laugh with friends over a tasty dinner with wine. It would be quiet, unstressed, glorious.
But what, we asked each other, should we name the camp? After batting around a lot of non-starters, we eventually settled on Camp Remowas. The name is an acronym for the things we wanted to do there: REading, MOvie-watching, WAlking, and S—. (The S could stand for Sleep. Or Swimming. Or Something Else. Campers get to decide.) Even as we enjoyed the shimmery glow of our imaginary camp, we knew that this program of activities wasn’t so different from weekends when the kids weren’t around. Inventing the camp was just our way of yearning for more free time.
Now, in our retirement lives, we pretty much live at Camp Remowas. With Covid, it’s become a two-person camp—unless we’re walking with people outdoors—but it’s comfortable, pretty, and quiet. And it’s low-stress, except for the stress we load on ourselves. (Not just the melodramas on the political front. We both write, so we’re pretty good at piling stress on ourselves. But that kind of stress I try to re-frame as ‘excitement’…)
This year at Camp Remowas, the holidays will be quiet. Years ago, when I was married to a Jewish man, I loved Hannukah: the menorah, the dreidels, the latkes. He, however, was determinedly secular and fiercely anti-holiday, so all that gradually fell by the wayside. Now, because Michael and I were both raised midwestern Protestants, we celebrate Christmas. We’ll be nostalgic occasionally for the family Christmases of past years. But mostly we’ll be happy. We’ll have our tree, a fire in the fireplace, our favorite ornaments, my shabby old creche, a few low-key presents, and the usual holiday music. Mostly we’ll be celebrating the light and warmth human beings create for each other during every year’s season of frost and darkness.
Maybe we’ll sit side-by-side in our comfy recliners and read A Christmas Carol aloud over several nights, watching the logs burn to embers, sipping eggnog or hot cider. Certainly we’ll turn off the lamps before we go to bed and sit in front of the shining tree, holding hands and enjoying the tiny lights, as the winter darkness falls soft and silent all around us.
Happy holidays to all! 
Your camp name sounds like the word in the song with the lyrics “in the jungle, the mighty jungle the lion walls tonight.” “Awemoway”. Can you hear it? Just hearing that song in my own head is comforting.
I agree there’s a peace and rest that used to only happen at Christmas. And watching the lights on the tree in the dark is one of the best things ever.
Awemaway, awemaway…..,,
Your camp sounds great… how do we sign up? As a child, I didn’t go away to summer camp but I did have the experience of sixth grade camp up at our local mountains. I have a vague memory of fun times with classmates/friends, but also the discomfort of multiple people sleeping in the cabins and getting up in the dark and cold to go to the bathroom. Camp Remowas sounds much more civilized.
I went to summer camps as a kid, too — church ones, YMCA, once even a week of golf. I didn’t mind roughing it too much then, except for the damp heat of an Oklahoma summer. But now!?!?! No thanks! But if we were inventing Camp Remowas now, I think we’d add bicycles. And if it were happening in the summer, I’d definitely move it as far north and as coastal as I could get.