Safe and Sound

All my babies are home safe and sound now. We picked #1 up from Camp Bold Eagle yesterday. 12 hours of driving.

He was happy to see us and we were happy to see him. Happiest to see him, though, was his brother. I came downstairs this morning and there they were knees to knees playing their DS's.

They came home with stories, adventures, bruises and memories. They'll be emailing their new friends and talking about camp until next year rolls around.

Each of the boys brought a packet home that has photos of each cabin's campers and counselors. At then end is a big picture of all the campers, counselers and staff. I showed the picture to my husband and said "what does this make you think of?". And he nodded, saying "yeah, I know".

See, when #1 was really young, there was a picture just like this. A camp picture with dozens of kids, counseler's etc.... And someone had circled the heads of the people who were still alive. Only a handful of those people were still living. The rest had died from the complications of AIDS, Hepatitis, or both.

These deaths were caused by tainted clotting factor derived from plasma collected from donors. The factor made it into the homes and bodies of thousands of innocent men, women and children. Some of the people who died where infected by their spouses who had used this factor and didn't know they were infected. Wives lost their lives because their husbands used this factor to stop their bodies from bleeding.

It makes me angry to have this be the first thing a camp picture made me think of instead of thinking about how much fun the boys had at camp. Maybe this will also keep me from forgetting what happened to our community.