My camping teacher friends gave me a little goodbye gift last week. They got together and managed to buy a small backpack-style bag filled with camp goodies. It had a camp pencil, a pen and notepad with the camp name across the top, a keyring, and (you guessed it) a coffee mug. The mug, however, isn’t an official camp mug. I kept hassling the camp director (nicely, really, just teasing her) that she needed to have mugs in the camp store. I even suggested a few simple designs for her. Since they didn’t carry mugs (yet), my friends procured a dining hall mug left over from a long-ago fundraiser. I’m sure I drank from this one or its twin several times over the three-day trip. Now I’ll sip from this and remember my camp co-workers and how much I loved getting up in the crisp, cool, woodsy mornings and having my coffee outside the main lodge. Oh, and I’ll smile at how hard my friends worked to get this perfect little souvenir.

(Oh, D., camp leader, I hope you don’t have a shortage of mugs now. I’ll make it up to you if you do. Really. Just say the word.)