Campers

Rabbi Shanee Michaelson is a teacher, writer, and roving rabbi based in Oregon. A recovered attorney, her journey to the rabbinate began during a career-break while learning at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem. After returning to Southern California, she worked as an educator in LA Unified schools while completing her studies and earning rabbinic ordination from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at American Jewish University. She moved to Oregon to join her husband, Chaim. We are happy to publish her poem in the Der Nister newsletter.

Campers by Rabbi Shanee Michaelson

The summer after my sister’s bat mitzvah
I went away to camp for the first time,
nineteen,
pretending adulthood was a place I had already arrived.
The lake sat at the center of everything.
From shore, it looked motionless.
Perfectly calm.
But every morning the water carried things away:
pine needles, fallen leaves, stray feathers.
And every evening something returned.
A shy girl found
her voice. A frightened swimmer found
courage.
My parents spent their first summer in nineteen years,
alone together:
No daughters, no carpools, no distractions.
Just the two of them,
Their letters arrived
separately.
I thought families were like the lake:
Still, dependable, unchanging.
I didn't understand that stillness

can hide a current.
By summer’s end, the current carried them
Apart.
No catastrophe–
Just two people discovering
they were no longer traveling in the same direction.
I returned to college.
My parents became two addresses.
And even now,
when I think of that summer,
I remember the lake:
how calm it looked,
and how much movement
it concealed.