Born Again

An Essay

by Cleo Kahane

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

When a person is asked to pinpoint a moment when she “grew up,” she might remember the first death she experienced, or her first night living alone, or something that happened during her first year away at college. I remember summer camp 2003.

It was a girls’ camp, and along with being taught how to identify trees, what snakes were poisonous, and how to make juice out of berries, we were taught about feminism. Every creature we saw was a “she.” G-d was not a He but an It.

The older girls were accountable for the younger ones, especially during swims in the creek. I recall standing in water, balancing one of the younger ones on my hip, and asking repeatedly: “Is this too deep? Do you want to try and swim?”

The final bonding experience was a campout. We set up tents, made a campfire, and collected berries (in order to make juice). We danced in a drum circle as the sun set.  When the sun had disappeared from the clearing completely, we went for a night hike. Each older girl was paired with a younger girl, and we were all instructed to keep hold of a rope as we walked through the forest. Flashlights were banned, so, except for the winks of hundreds of fireflies that also weaved their way through the woods, the only light came from the sky. When a whimper of fear came from a younger girl, her older partner would explain that the head counselor, Lisa—who resembled a man, with her broad build, short blond hair, and plain face, and who was rumored to be a lesbian—carried a hunting knife in her pocket “just in case.”

In the middle of the forest, the hiking stopped. I was in back, holding the rope; while I waited with my partner, I kicked rocks around, growing nervous. People ahead of us in the line began to mumble, and soon we were being led toward a new clearing, from which an eerie light was shining. Those of us in back stretched our necks to see. All I could make out were the broad shoulders of Lisa, who held up her hand and yelled: “Quiet! I want every one of you to pick one thing from your childhood to leave behind and one thing to take with you into womanhood.  Okay?”

The girls around me began to debate which stuffed animal they should abandon. I can’t recall what I chose; I remember only my growing fear, and the thought: Should I actually know what to leave behind by now?

A small fire burned near the center of the clearing. Beside it, the counselors stood around a tall cardboard box turned on its side, the ends open; they had covered it with branches. It was a tunnel, just wide enough to fit us if we crouched in line, and just long enough to hide us from view for the few seconds it would take to crawl through.

“Listen up, everyone!” a woman announced. She was pointing at the box. “This is the birth canal. You guys are going to crawl though it, one at a time, into womanhood. You’re going to leave one thing from childhood behind, and you’re going to take one thing with you. Who wants to go first?”

One by one we crawled through the cardboard vagina. When it was my turn I crouched and began my journey. The inside was slippery; it was harder to crawl through than I had thought it would be. My knees kept slipping backward, making the box sway a little. Branches scraped against the top. I smelled the pine and heard the giggles of the other girls. I remember pausing for a few seconds with my knees scrunched up to my chest, staring at the ground ahead, wondering what would happen if I just let myself slide back to the beginning. But another girl was waiting behind me.

When we reached the other side, we were made to wear wreaths on our heads and to take our places in a circle. I felt like a Christmas tree. Lisa was the second-to-last to crawl through. She was a bit wider than the cardboard box, so it shook violently. The branches fell off it, and the other counselors had to hold the box still so that she could proceed. Her arms came out first, and her head and torso followed. One girl remained off to the side, sucking her thumb. She refused to crawl through, but she was given a wreath anyway. We then stood holding hands in the clearing and sang about finding ourselves, our voices topping the chirps of crickets and the croaks of frogs: “For each child that’s born,” we sang, “a morning star rises and sings to the universe who they are.” After we had finished, we again took hold of the rope and began our hike back to camp, some girls waving their wreaths over their heads in gestures of celebration.

And I remember wondering: Should I feel different now?