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Hey, everybody.
Welcome to Love Letters.
So a few months ago I was at the theater and a woman walked up to me at the end and she was like Meredith, it's me from the podcast.
And then I admitted I did not recognize her.
But then she said, no, it's me, Tara, from the 2018 episode about love at summer camp.
The weird thing is, I think about Tara a lot, especially this time of year when there are kids in camp t-shirts all over the city.
Tara, in case you forgot, was the middle-aged woman who reconnected with a summer camp crush and found love with him all over again.
Of course, at the theater that night, I asked her, are the two of you still together?
Where are you now?
Can I get an update?
And she said, sure, I'll fill you in.
So first, today we're going to give you the classic Love Letters episode, so you have all the details.
Then, at the end, an update. straight from the source.
Enjoy.
From the Boston Globe, this is Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Hey, everyone.
I hope you're all having a lovely summer.
We're back with a special bonus episode of Love Letters, something to tide you over until season two.
And we're here to talk about camp.
I've always been fascinated by camp love and what happens when the summer ends.
Maybe that's because I've never known camp love myself.
See, I didn't go to sleepaway camp.
I've never known that sense of freedom, that bonding, and yeah, that love.
In my imagination, my camp boyfriend would have taken me to the kissing rock or some field of wildflowers where campers make out.
In this fantasy.
By the way, I have no allergies and could frolic in a field of wildflowers without getting eczema.
To explore the idea of camp love and the end-of-summer loss that comes with it.
I figured I'd go to the experts.
I started with David Wayne.
He's the architect of the classic summer camp movie Wet Hot American Summer and the recent Netflix series of the same name.
If you haven't seen it, Wet Hot is a hilarious send-up of summer camp romance.
David says he drew heavily on his experiences at a Jewish camp in Maine as a kid.
Like the time he borrowed a camp van as a teenager and tried to sneak back and visit this girl.
I had a crush on a girl and I kissed her one night and then had to leave the next day to drive a bunch of kids to an overnight in Baxter State Park.
And I was so anxious to see this girl again that I left them there with the other counselor and drove back late at night.
The hundreds of reasons why that was stupid did not occur to me.
I was driving through the forest and I was blasting the music so that I could stay awake.
Plus I didn't really know how to drive.
Plus I'm speeding.
Plus it's a very dark, windy road in the middle of a giant state park.
And then at one point I smashed into a tree and slammed into what I thought was the brake, but it was the accelerator.
So I slammed even further into this tree, lodging the fender into the tire to such a point.
There's no way I could move this van.
It's pitch black, and this is pre-cell phones.
David's only option is to find his way back to the campsite on foot.
I could barely see my hand in front of my eyes.
Finally made it back to where the rest of the group was and was, you know, I'm so sorry.
And they found the ranger and they had to unlodge the van later.
And I talked to the director of the camp finally the next day.
And he said, never again are we letting junior counselors drive the vehicles.
So does he get the girl?
It worked out for the two weeks that the relationship was destined to be.
Okay, so it worked out with her, at least temporarily.
Two weeks is like a year in camp time.
So much happens in a day.
Relationships start and end in a day, for real.
Well, this is awesome.
Thank you so, so much.
This was great.
My pleasure.
David and I also talked about this unique opportunity you have at camp to reinvent yourself, to become someone else or maybe to find your true self.
At camp, you can be cooler than you are back at home, sportier, more connected to your religion.
Maybe it's a safer place to come out.
Sometimes it's at camp that we discover who we really are and what we really value in life and in other people.
And sometimes those discoveries come at a pretty early age.
I started to ask around about people's camp romances.
That's how I met Tara.
She's a graphic designer who lives outside Boston.
She's in her 50s.
Her family founded and still runs Camp Skodak, a sleepaway camp nestled between Albany, New York and the Berkshires.
Hey, Tara, thanks for chatting.
Hi, Meredith.
From the time she was five years old, Tara spent every summer at Camp Skodak.
She couldn't imagine being anywhere else.
I still get a chill when I drive to camp coming around that last bend.
The camp is on two sides of a road.
On one side is primarily bunks and a dining hall, and on the other side there was a playhouse and a golf course.
Camp was like one big summer-long sleepover party, Tara says.
Part of what made it so fun and memorable?
Camp love.
Camp love is a special kind of love.
Maybe because you know from the start that it can only last a couple of months.
The loves at camp were always really different than at school or anywhere else.
They really did take on this special glow, just like the friendships did.
There were a lot of camp couples that were together summer after summer.
And I do think there just was, there is something special about those feelings.
They had dances maybe once or twice a week.
They had something called Sadie Hawkins Day, where they would have boys rehearse.
They'd run and then the girls would chase them and they'd catch their boy and you'd go get married.
That would not happen now.
No.
With pipe cleaner rings, I got married.
You know, every year as I camp, I got married.
I've got all the rings to prove it.
And then, when the summer was over, people went home.
The love ended, or at least was put in storage until the following summer.
Sure, it was sad, but everyone knew the deal.
Probably exchange a letter or two, maybe a phone call if you're allowed to make long-distance phone calls back in the day.
But I think it was pretty accepted that everyone just goes back to their own lives and see you next summer.
Let's talk about like the first camp boyfriend that was for real.
Well, that's probably Mark.
I want to say I was probably around 11.
I do think I had another boyfriend the summer before him who was the best athlete in the bunk and I liked him, but I don't really remember having anything super special about it.
And then Mark came to camp and he was even better athlete and he was so handsome and I don't know.
I just know I loved him.
From the second I saw him, I loved him.
He just had dark skin and dark hair and he was just big and he was great at every sport.
We would always dance together.
We'd sit next to each other at movies.
We would go to this amusement park and he would win me a stuffed animal.
There was a kid in his bunk.
I think he had diabetes and he was not in Mark's friend group.
But I remember we were at a cookout and this kid went into some sort of diabetic episode and Mark, without missing a beat, just scooped up this kid and ran him to the health center.
And I just remember thinking he was so heroic.
Tara remembers their first kiss vividly.
Yeah, it was after a night activity.
There was the road in the middle of the camp and we had to cross the road.
And I don't know, we were by the fence crossing the road.
I remember he had braces.
So I remember he had really soft lips, but then there was the braces going on too.
But I think I was probably just really excited to kiss him.
For three summers in a row, Tara and Mark are boyfriend-girlfriend.
A sweet time that all kind of runs together in Tara's memory.
And then, when Tara is about 14, she shows up to Camp Skodak for the summer, and Mark isn't there.
He hasn't come back.
Their young romance evaporates.
So Tara moves on.
She finds new camp boyfriends.
She and Mark lose touch.
I don't really remember hearing about him, and I certainly never saw him.
And I didn't know where he went to college or anything.
But...
Somewhere deep in her psyche, Mark remains.
We'll be right back after the break.
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From the Boston Globe and on the media, it's season two of The Harvard Plan.
This time, it really is personal.
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How often would you think of him?
I don't think I really thought of him very much over the years, but I dreamt about him.
I would have dreams.
So tell me about those dreams.
Sometimes I would have dreams that there was a reunion and I was seeing him again.
But he still was a little boy in those dreams.
He wasn't an adult.
I don't think he was however I left him last.
I think there just was a very pure love, that feeling that I had from him.
You know, he was probably just the first taste of having that attraction and real feeling.
Tara meets another guy out of college, a friend of her sister's.
They get married.
They have twins, a girl and a boy.
But after eight years, their marriage falls apart.
Unbeknownst to her.
Mark has also gotten married, also had children, also seen his marriage dissolve.
So, more than 20 years after Tara and Mark had first met at camp, her sister and his sister, who had remained friends, conspire to reconnect them.
It's the early 2000s or so.
Tara doesn't know what to expect. she's never known Mark as a grown-up.
He called me, and we had a couple conversations.
We met up in New York.
We had one date.
Tara does feel a connection again, but the timing just isn't right.
He had young children in New York and I had young children in Boston, and we didn't pursue it after that date.
We're just a little too practical.
For both of us, our kids were pretty much a priority at that point.
So Tara and Mark return to their respective lives.
Raising kids.
Life.
Like 15 more years pass, and now social media exists.
Now we're on Facebook, and we're both in other relationships, and I see he's in Barcelona with her.
I had just been Barcelona with my boyfriend.
I tell him where to go and I'm happy for him.
He's happy for me.
It's a very periphery thing.
We just maybe liked each other's posts or occasionally would send a text, but nothing really significant.
By 2017, Tara has an eight-year relationship that's coming to an end.
Mark is also ending a relationship.
We talked a couple of times and then I got the drunken text that Do you remember anything about?
Like what the text said.
Of course, I remember every word that the text said.
But basically, he just seemed to really like who he thought I had become.
And he just had a feeling that there's a possibility of a shared life together and that he realizes how ridiculous that sounded.
But that, you know, we should see each other.
And so...
We did.
Mark tells her there's a medical conference in Boston he wants to attend.
He proposes getting together.
She's gun-shy because her previous relationship has, like, just ended.
But she agrees.
And I thought, I'd be crazy just not to take a look.
See, you know, it doesn't have to be anything.
But if it's not anything, then we don't have to waste our time.
And when we saw each other yeah, we were holding hands in the Boston Common within 10 minutes and there was definitely still something there.
Like camp.
Like camp.
You know, it took a little while, I think, for me to consciously stop trying to look for that camp boy and look at the man that was truly in front of me, because there was this romantic notion there.
But I wanted to be realistic about.
You know, this isn't mark and tara from 1978.
You know we are here and but i think you know obviously, as we got to know each other, sometimes we still just say can you believe this is us?
Now that we've reacquainted an adult life, i feel like there was more to it than i knew.
I thought wow, i was really smart when i was 11 and 12 and the things that i projected onto him were a lot more real than I knew.
I do feel like there was a sense of him being more soulful and being this caring person and being really mentally strong, those kinds of things.
I feel like I did know them somehow.
What would he say were those things about you?
I think you'd have to ask him that.
So we got Mark on the phone and we asked him, what was it about Tara that drew you to her?
That she always looked for the goodness in people, you know, and I was always more like cynical and skeptical of people's motivations.
She was always very pure and kind of honest.
And so I really liked that quality.
And she still has that today.
She's like living in the summer of love as we speak.
Now, she was laughing and said this was a drunken text.
Was this a drunken text?
Drunken text?
I had a couple of pina coladas.
Yes, definitely.
I mean, it took like a little bit of courage because I didn't know.
I wasn't sure exactly what the response would be.
Wait, do you have that text handy?
Would it be too much to ask for you to read a little bit of it or some of it?
You want me to read a bit?
Yeah.
I texted her, Tara...
In my hopes and dreams, I thought we would see each other again and feel a sense of warmth belonging, desire and attachment that would wash over the both of us.
All of those feelings that I thought would come over me... This goes on for a while.
The text Mark sent to Tara, one single text, was several hundred words long.
In my 10 years as an advice columnist I've never seen a confessional drunken relationship text this long.
After I sent the text, all she wrote me back was basically like, holy shit, Mark.
More than a year after that text, Mark and Tara remain together.
They still live in different cities, but they're making it work.
Their kids are older, so it's easier to see each other now.
They've even visited Camp Skodak together.
They found their faces in old photographs hung in the office and their names on plaques from their old bunks.
If you had advice for people leaving a love at camp behind, who are sort of feeling that pain, what would you tell them?
Live their life, enjoy their good feelings and good memories and good experiences and treasure it.
I don't really believe in fate or meant to be.
I think Mark believes in that, maybe a little more than I do, but I do think that if it's meant to be, you'll get back around to it.
Those instincts that you have at an early age, There's something to them.
There's more to them than you think.
There was a reason why we always kind of found each other again.
That's why you know, when I have my kids and they feel something for somebody that those are, it's not like just something to be dismissed.
And I recently found, when we got back together, an old yearbook that he had signed.
It said, Dear Tara, you're a really great kid.
This wasn't our best summer, but we worked it out in the end.
Neither one of us can remember what could have been going on.
And then he said, we'll always be together through thick and thin.
Love, Mark.
Wow.
So now he says to me, how many people would keep that promise?
Not bad.
Thank you so much for sharing this story.
I hope that there are many more trips to camp for the two of you.
Thank you.
I had a lot of fun.
Thank you so much for your story, Mark.
Well, thank you very much.
It does make me feel a little emotional to share it, but I'm happy to share it and I'm glad you enjoy it.
So there are some lessons here, I think.
The first, which we learned from Tara and Mark, applies to anyone who falls in love at a young age.
Maybe we shouldn't ignore the instincts we have when we're young.
Maybe they really can point us in the right direction.
Another lesson, for me at least, is this.
One of the biggest things I missed by not going to sleepaway camp was the experience of reinvention.
My friends got to be someone new during those summers.
Maybe that's part of what they fell in love with.
But what if we don't need summer camp to make that transformation?
If we single people especially, start acting like who we'd want to be at camp, the kind of person you'd want to kiss in a field of wildflowers, Maybe we can love ourselves a little bit more.
We can become that person we want to be.
Before Tara left, we begged her to sing us any camp songs that she still remembered.
She's going to be completely mortified that we're using this.
But how could we not?
It's just too good.
The boys at Camp Skodak will never be gone.
Tall, dark, and handsome, and six foot three, the boys we call our own.
We'll wear glasses and braces and smell of B.O.
Their nails will be polished and in their hair.
They'll wear a blue ribbon from County Fair and they will say to us Roses are red, violets are blue.
My name is Melvin.
May I dance with you?
But you found the tall, dark and handsome one.
I did.
I hope you enjoyed that.
And now for an update.
Honestly, I should do more updates because following people over the years is kind of delightful.
What I need to tell you now is some bad news or fine news.
It's neutral news, I'm going to call it.
But Tara and Mark are no longer together.
I'm going to let her explain.
Mark and I were together for seven years, long distance, but seeing each other quite often.
We had some challenges during COVID and he also had a very long, drawn-out divorce going on in the background.
In the end, some of that caught up with us and brought some incompatibilities to the forefront.
I asked Tara, does this mean that camp love always falls apart after camp?
Can summer love transcend summer vibes and be successful in the real world?
I asked Tara what she'd tell somebody who's thinking about reaching out to a camp love.
I think camp love can thrive outside of camp.
I have seen that play out successfully many times.
The bonds of those less intense, complicated childhood times can really distill us down to some of the most authentic parts of ourselves.
So in that vein, I think the relationships are very real.
If two people are single, I absolutely think reaching out to an old camp flame is worth exploring.
As long as you're grounded in the reality of seeing who the person is in the here and now, then I don't see why not.
I've been single for a year now and at 61, I feel very clear as to what I am looking at going forward.
My last question to Tara was, what do you want now?
I think I want what most people want deep down.
That is just the whole package.
Love, companionship, fun, friendship, genuine connection.
But I'm also at a point in my life where I've learned to give most of those things to myself and through family and friends.
I'm still hopeful, but while I wait, in a way, I guess I'm not waiting.
Dating this past year has had every kind of moment, sometimes hilarious, sometimes disappointing, sometimes fun.
Everybody hates being on the dating apps, but it's also a necessary evil, because otherwise there's very few options.
I've met some great new friends this year through the apps, which was not the goal, but has been really wonderful.
So while I wait patiently, do you know anyone?
To Tara, I say, of course I'll keep a lookout.
Let's all keep a lookout for each other.
See you soon.
And for now, let's enjoy the rest of the summer.
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