Tiger Eyes

My brother and I used to fight over whose turn it was to lick the S & H Green Stamps my mother collected when she shopped at Musser's Market. The minty green sheets with their bold red lettering were as good as gold to our family when we lived on Goshen Farm.

The goal was to fill all the pages in a booklet with the coveted stamps. The completed booklets could be exchanged for merchandise. And, it was with the help of S & H green stamps that my parents afforded most of our camping equipment: sleeping bags for all of us, a cookstove, and a Coleman lantern.

The sleeping bags were covered in a deep blue cotton and the inside was lined in a golden flannel imprinted with pictures of Canada geese caught in mid-flight and wood ducks nestled in clumps of cattails on a marsh. Our parents zipped their bags together, for reasons we did not yet understand, while my siblings and I were happy to snuggle into the depths of our own warmth. When my sleeping bag's big silver zipper closed me inside for the night, I would feel like the luckiest girl in all of Lancaster county.

Some of my fondest memories growing up were of the camping trips we took as a family. We would load the pop-up camper and head off for a weekend. These times were extra special to us because amid the hustle and bustle of our communal life at Goshen, we were always under the watchful eyes and listening ears of others. To have our parents to ourselves was the biggest treat we knew.

We camped in places that had trails that wound through the woods and along the water. Muddy Run. Nicely's Pond. Susquehanna State Park. Many of my best childhood memories include the heady scent of new pine needles mixed with the sweet decay of old; the sight of sunbeams poked like long, yellow fingers through the leafy forest ceiling; and the mighty voice of the Susquehanna as it tumbled to empty itself in the Chesapeake Bay.

It was my dad who taught us each how to build a strong campfire. The trick, you see, is in learning how to stack your firewood in a loose pyramid over a substantial bed of paper and kindling. You need to leave enough air pockets to let your fire breathe upwards.

Around those tidy campfires, my dad and mom would take turns reading us such stories as Gentle Ben and Little Britches. We would wrap biscuit dough around the ends of long sticks and hold them over the flames until they were toasted to perfection. The doughy goodness topped with melted butter was delicious even when it wasn't completely done.

The green cookstove always sat at the end of the picnic table in our campsite. Its rickety sides protected the burners from the breeze. It was on that stovetop in a large black skillet that our mother made us the pancake men we adored. Their limbs were always fatter than they were intended to be, and their heads disappeared into their shoulders, but we gobbled them up as fast as she could make them.

After the sun set, we learned to play Rook by the light of the Coleman lantern at the picnic table while dozens of brown moths gathered over our heads to beat their protest against the night air. Later inside the camper, we would watch as my father dimmed the lantern until the mantles glowed orange through the inky dark. "Tiger eyes" we called them.

Once the "tiger eyes" burned low and disappeared, I would burrow down in the warm safety of my S & H green stamp sleeping bag to dream of a new day.

Thank you, S & H. And, thank you, Mom and Dad for lasting memories.