IBC, 1965 -- Sundays (Pt. I)

The weekend schedule at IBC was less structured, with a lot more free time.  On Saturdays campers were given large blocks of time in which to hang out in their respective rooms and cabins or on the T, doing all sorts of unwitting damage to their skin and hair by applying liberal amounts of Johnson’s Baby Oil and Sun-In.  We also had the option of signing up for activities not offered during the week, such as sailing, water skiing and riflery.  My group mates and I were too young to participate in any of those, so we would spend our Saturdays inventing childish games on the beach or playing with our amassed collection of Troll dolls, all the while studying the older campers as they strolled back and forth through the Lodge, taking notes for future reference – a future when the tops to our two-piece bathing suits didn’t end up under our chins if we jumped off the rafts.

Sundays were moderately more structured in that there was enforced worship on Sunday mornings.  Although there were campers of all denominations, and although its methods were hardly evangelical, IBC was, at its core, a Christian camp.  From singing Grace before each meal to the Friday fish dinners.  (Perch!  The religiously mandated food that made the term “God-awful” doubly apropos.)  To the regulation Sunday Whites in our wardrobes (finally the mystery from page 5 is solved).  Morris and Dorothy made sure that good Christian tradition was observed. 

And this wasn’t just a case of all dressed up in white and nowhere to go.  We all had somewhere to go.  For the Catholics, that somewhere was to a special church in the town of Northport.  For the rest of us, even the Jews, that somewhere was called the Birch Chapel

The Birch Chapel was an opening cleared in the grove of birch trees to the north of camp, accessed by a gentle path.  It was a lovely place that somehow inspired a reverential silence among even the most boisterous camper upon entering.  Three or four rows of paired benches faced a rustic type of altar that consisted of a cross made from two thick tree branches lashed together, suspended above a podium supporting a large “book” – presumably representative of The Bible – carved from some sort of dark hardwood. 

The services, as supervised by Dorothy, included readings of scripture by volunteers and singing of hymns.  Those unfamiliar with any chosen hymn merely had to open their ears and try to mimic someone nearby, sotto voce and a quarter beat behind and no one ever seemed to be the wiser.  If the non-Christians among us minded the proceedings, I never heard… or even thought to ask.  Religion had not figured prominently enough in my upbringing to date to engender genuine opinions one way or the other.   As a matter of fact, my upbringing had been so particularly secular that it wasn’t for several summers spent sitting amid those shimmering trees singing “This Is My Father’s World,” that I realized the song wasn’t about my dad.

As far as religious curiosity went among my peers at camp, it did not seem to extend beyond the cursory “What are you?” we asked of each other on our first Sunday together, as we watched the Catholic girls, with their doilies carefully pinned to their hair, mount the camp bus bound for town.  It seemed an obvious question to ask, and having answered, we were content to move on.  This was more than fine with me, since, as I’ve mentioned, matters of faith were not my strong suit.  Furthermore, I had only recently come into the knowledge of what, exactly, I was.

My father had been raised a Jew, and it had been explained to me that my mother had converted so that they could be married by a rabbi.  Converted from what, was never fully explained.  Converted from “not Jewish” seemed to be as much as I could figure out by myself.  But for some reason my dad and Judaism had parted ways and therefore we celebrated Christmas every year, complete with a light-up Santa on the lawn, and we went to the First Unitarian Universalist Church every Easter, complete with bonnets and jelly bean hunts.

As a matter of fact, the only declaratory statement I ever heard with regard to my family’s specific religious bent was when I was in second grade and had to be taken to the emergency room for what my parents feared might be a broken finger.  I sat on my father’s lap at the desk as a nurse asked him all sorts of questions from a form she was filling out. 

“Name?”  Beth Irene Fieger.

“Address?”  23511 Avon.

“Father’s occupation?”  Attorney.

“Mother’s occupation?”  Teacher.

My mind was going numb and my finger was growing purple as the singularly unimportant line of questioning droned on.  When were they going to get to the important stuff?  You know, “How much does it hurt?”  Because that’s the question only I could answer, and boy was I ready to let them know.  But then the nurse posed a question that honest-to-goodness, I had kinda been wondering about myself.

“Religion?”

I forgot about my finger.  I had to hear this one.

“Atheist,” said my dad.

So, that was it.  I had my answer.  I wouldn’t have to shrug anymore when the kids at DCDS asked me what I was.  Of course, I still had no idea what I was, but that didn’t matter as long as I had a word to name it.  Protestant or Catholic or Jewish was pretty much as descriptive as you needed to be in elementary school.  It was like the color of your eyes or where you lived.  Nobody ever followed up “I'm right handed.” with “Don’t you believe in ambidexterity?”  Now, whenever anyone asked, I could reply with authority.  And without thought.

And so my answer stood me in good stead… That is, until the first post-Birch-Chapel Monday morning, when I walked into the crafts cabin and immediately found myself swept into a cradling embrace by Debbie, the crafts instructor (with the small gold cross on her necklace.)

Puzzled, since this was not the greeting she had given the other campers, I looked up to find an expression of such pity that my heart sank.  Something terrible must have happened back home and she was trying to find the words to tell me.

“You poor thing,” she said to me.  Yep, that was it.  One of my cats must’ve died.  I braced myself to hear the worst.

“You’re an Atheist,” was her tragic news.

A rush of “Is that all?” relief swept over me.  It was quickly replaced by confusion.  This was not at all the reaction my dad got from that nurse.  But finally, as Debbie continued to rock me like a lost lamb, a discouraging realization took hold.

No doubt about it, I had to get a better answer.