Like riding a bicycle
Someone brought an archery bow for target shooting in to my office. Because that’s just the kind of outdoorsy place Boulder is. Or ECOS is. Or it’s what kids do. I’m not really sure what collection of reasons combine to make this seem like the sort of thing that happens here, but there she was with a bow in her hand, flat and unstrung. Her kid doesn’t use it anymore, and another colleague’s kid may use it for summer camp.
Like the proverbial person who gets on a bicycle after years of not riding only to pedal effortlessly, I knew what to do. I strung the bow in about two seconds, gently threading my leg through the loose string, placing the lower end over my left foot and the center of the bow on the outside of my right hip. A gentle push out with my hip and down with my right hand, and the job was done. I haven’t even thought about archery since the summer I was 17, and yet I remembered how to string a bow as if I’d just emptied a quiver. Isn’t it funny what a person keeps locked away in long-term memory? Isn’t funny when it surfaces on a Thursday morning 2000 miles and two decades from the last place you accessed it?
I took archery all through my eight summers at my Appalachian sleepover camp, and when I was a counselor I taught it. I’m not sure what I enjoyed about it, but I was good, and that’s often what kids enjoy — things they excel at. I even won a camp award — The Golden Archer — the kind of award that goes to only one camper each season. It’s the kind of thing that seems silly now, but it meant so much to me at the time. My name is painted on a wooden plaque in golden letters in the Assembly Hall. I’m sure it’s still hanging, a dusty witness to hundreds of girls singing camp songs each summer. When I was a camper there were Golden Archer plaques, and similar honors for other activities, on the walls listed year by year beginning in the 1920s when the camp was founded.
Being a parent is an opportunity to relive your own childhood -- to remember and to share things you once enjoyed. Right now, with my three-year-old girls, I’m reliving my preschool love of the book “Bread and Jam for Frances” and the first time I took tumbling lessons. My colleague’s archery bow catapulted me forward a bit in my memory march because her kids are older, doing the things older kids do. I’m sure I’ll revisit my fond days on an archery field again when my children are ready for the kind of summer camp where they teach archery. Maybe I could even volunteer and help.
Like the proverbial person who gets on a bicycle after years of not riding only to pedal effortlessly, I knew what to do. I strung the bow in about two seconds, gently threading my leg through the loose string, placing the lower end over my left foot and the center of the bow on the outside of my right hip. A gentle push out with my hip and down with my right hand, and the job was done. I haven’t even thought about archery since the summer I was 17, and yet I remembered how to string a bow as if I’d just emptied a quiver. Isn’t it funny what a person keeps locked away in long-term memory? Isn’t funny when it surfaces on a Thursday morning 2000 miles and two decades from the last place you accessed it?
I took archery all through my eight summers at my Appalachian sleepover camp, and when I was a counselor I taught it. I’m not sure what I enjoyed about it, but I was good, and that’s often what kids enjoy — things they excel at. I even won a camp award — The Golden Archer — the kind of award that goes to only one camper each season. It’s the kind of thing that seems silly now, but it meant so much to me at the time. My name is painted on a wooden plaque in golden letters in the Assembly Hall. I’m sure it’s still hanging, a dusty witness to hundreds of girls singing camp songs each summer. When I was a camper there were Golden Archer plaques, and similar honors for other activities, on the walls listed year by year beginning in the 1920s when the camp was founded.
Being a parent is an opportunity to relive your own childhood -- to remember and to share things you once enjoyed. Right now, with my three-year-old girls, I’m reliving my preschool love of the book “Bread and Jam for Frances” and the first time I took tumbling lessons. My colleague’s archery bow catapulted me forward a bit in my memory march because her kids are older, doing the things older kids do. I’m sure I’ll revisit my fond days on an archery field again when my children are ready for the kind of summer camp where they teach archery. Maybe I could even volunteer and help.
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