Personal Narrative: Timshel

I never learned much about the bible, and hand never heard about the word timshel until East of Eden. “Timshel” is something everyone is familiar with. Learning to overcome a bad situation and become a better person. It took me 14 summers but I did have a moment of realization. I learned to appreciate the influence of one woman on my life in such a marvelous way. For the first 14 summers I was on this plant I visited Acadia National Park and the Acadia Summer Arts Program. The name may be deceiving, because this was no ordinary “Arts Program”. The Acadia Summer Arts Program, commonly known as A. S. A. P., was where hundreds of artists and others from the top of their professions ranging from ages 20 to 90. The Program was run by the extraordinarily generous Marion “Kippy” Stroud. For the people that wouldn’t usually have the
budget to fly to and stay in Bar Harbor, Maine she would pay for all the expenses, housing, food, and flight. She would also host dinners two to three times a week where everyone would become friends and then the composers, writers, painters, architects, etc. etc. would hold lectures where they would enlighten the crowd on everything they do. These lectures were things I remember to this day and am so glad to have been in the audience. I am also lucky to have called Kippy something like a relative, being she and my father grew extremely close over the many many years they knew each other. She was not a fan of children, which you think would make the relationship be distant, but she was always asking my dad about me and during our occasional conversations she always asked questions only someone thoughtful would know about. She once heard I enjoyed making, and eating, guacamole so she had me make a batch for the appetizers before dinner. It was the highlight of my summer. The moment I learned my own lesson of Timshel was the day and years following Kippy’s abrupt death.
At the funeral at I looked around in the Early morning mist and saw all the people I had grown close to, bonds that could never be broken. So many parts of my life are affected because of the relationships formed in the big house next to the pond. I rewatch old lectures on CDs and text congratulations to my best friend from A. S. A. P. when he received the soccer scholarship he had always dreamed of. This summer I even met up with a band named So Percussion for a food drive at Princeton University, where some of them are professors. Jobs they wouldn’t have gotten without the help of Oscar Winner David Lang, who they met at A. S. A. P. I have had long talks with a leader of Black Lives Matters whose parents were a part of the Black Panthers. My father's best friend is now Paul Greengard, a Nobel Prize winner on the way to curing Alzheimer's. It is impossible to not appreciate the memories I continue to create with, continually sustaining the relationships Kippy initiated. I am so proud to have been a part of something as special as Kippy’s
Camp.