The Cook at Camp Wildwood

I worked as a camp counselor for one summer when I was nineteen, and the person I remember most is the cook, Miss Beverly.

She ran the kitchen like a ship's captain and fed two hundred kids three meals a day without breaking a sweat. She knew which kids were homesick and slipped them extra cornbread. She let counselors raid the fridge at midnight on the condition that we told her funny stories in the morning.

On the last night she made a giant cake in the shape of the lake, with blue frosting and little candy canoes. The whole camp sang to her. She pretended to be annoyed and wiped her eyes with an oven mitt.

That was fifteen years ago. I still make her cornbread recipe, which she wrote for me on a napkin. It's taped inside my cupboard door, a little greasy now. I hope someone is singing to her somewhere tonight.