Summer is approaching, and with the exception of Club Med, the years of summer camp have passed for grown ups. My son hasn’t yet wanted to do overnight camp, my husband never went, so I’m the only one in the house who knows about summer camp. The joy of camp songs, bug juice, care packages, hand-written letters home to parents, bunk beds, falling in love, falling out of love, making lifelong friends who you knew would be your friends for the rest of your life who, it turns out, are no longer your friends.
Every summer I came home with an extraordinary appetite, piles of dirty and musty laundry, pictures, stories, frizzy hair, bug bites on every inch of exposed skin, scars and bruises from adventures and mishaps, both physical and social. One summer I came away with a marriage proposal from a guy who wanted to buy me an island. He was way too old to be making this kind of play for a camper still in high school. Yet he did. I can’t remember all the details, but somehow he came to visit me and meet my parents a few months later, in the fall. His luggage arrived, via a courier wearing a beige summer suit, a day before he did. The next day, Leo appeared. He brought with him a ring with a tiny, nearly invisible diamond chip.
My parents didn’t quite know how to deal with the situation. Before his luggage arrived, I don’t think they believed that a camp counselor would have made me an offer of marriage/island ownership. I did make stuff up back then, but sometimes life gives you something so wild you cannot make it up. The day the doorbell rang, and we opened it to find hand-delivered luggage, they began to understand that something, although they couldn’t figure out what, was going on here other than my imagination.
We had laughed that all we had to do was add water to the suitcase and the man would materialize. “Instant Leo!” we exclaimed. Later, since we hadn’t actually believed he was coming, we switched to planning mode. My mother would make dinner for Leo. My mother would have to talk to me about whether I wished to accept an offer for marriage from a person I barely knew. To her credit, she had this talk with me. I told her I’d rather finish high school.
We had awkward conversation. We ate an awkward meal where the only thing I remember is that Leo ate his chicken with a fork and knife, my family tore into it with our teeth. We had white paper napkins at each place setting. Leo’s face was the only one without grease on his chin and cheeks.
I was mortified that my family, whose good manners I once considered normal, was actually barbarian compared to the model of upper class Canadian/British society sitting at our table. I was in disbelief that the experience was happening at all. After dinner, my father told me he’d thought it over, and it would be OK with him if I married Leo. Good manners, pleasant chit-chat, and a tiny diamond chip had convinced my dad that it was better to give up my plans for high school graduation and college, to meet a guy the usual way, and accept the offer of the shiny ring, shiny man.
Three things worked against Leo’s offer and kept me in high school: I didn’t know anything about him. I didn’t particularly like nor dislike him. I was in the habit of defying my father. Only now do I wonder about the creepiness of a grown man trolling summer camp for a teenager bride-to-be. I think he kissed my cheek once, but otherwise he only talked to me. Nothing to report there. The whole thing felt more surreal than anything else.
It’s probably 35 years or more since Instant Leo appeared at my front door. I made the right decision – withstood the awe and the pressure of the compliment. He made me feel unique and somehow selected, but not loved or wanted or understood, the things I have come to know that work far better for me than the promise of an island. I do wonder, sometimes, just where the island was, and if, indeed, he had the capacity to buy it. Johnny Depp has an island; I might have, too.
Or maybe not. Maybe I’d have accepted Leo’s proposal and then just as instantly as he appeared, things would have turned bad. Being “selected” does not guarantee being appreciated, known or supported. Instant oatmeal, instant Jell-O, instant click . . . these things don’t bring the real deal. I have kept Instant Leo’s ring all these years. Long enough to tarnish. Long enough to make me wonder if the now-dulled chip wasn’t actually a diamond. I kept it only because without it I was afraid I’d forget this ever happened to me.
The last time I visited my parents, I asked them if they remembered Instant Leo. Their faces brightened and they laughed as they recalled the events. To them, it was purely a good memory, un-tinged with humiliation about how we devour chicken. It had happened. I didn’t need the ring to prove it. They’re pretty sure I did the right thing to hold out for the life I have, even though they liked Instant Leo more than some of the real boyfriends I had later in high school and college. Sometimes my Dad lets out a wistful sigh, and I wonder if he’s thinking about the parallel universe where his daughter married the man who bought her an island. And he, like the peasant father whose daughter marries the prince, lived a lifetime with the shiny things, comfort and ease that have eluded him.