Pre-Camp

It’s pre-camp season and I’m in the city. It feels weird. Most years, I’ve moved to camp right after mothers day and my birthday. This year, I’m not moving until June 1 and it feels so weird.

A&M are at camp. They are organizing, cleaning, planning programming and training, and all of the other random pre-camp stuff. I’ve face-timed with them several mornings, exchanged a million emails, calls and texts. I am working on staff training and pre-camp stuff too. But I’m not THERE.

I feel disconnected and I feel like I’m missing out. I don’t enjoy cleaning buildings that have been closed down for 9 months. I don’t enjoy moving heavy boxes of stuff around camp. But it’s all part of camp and I shouldn’t be missing out.

At the same time I am feeling so left out of camp, I am SO anxious about bringing my baby to camp. I’m sure all parents say the same thing about their babies, but my baby is PERFECT. He has beautiful, perfect skin with pink chubby cheeks. He has perfect blue eyes and blond hair and he is beautiful. He looks like a china doll.

My favorite childhood memories are from our cabin in the woods, playing in mud puddles, playing outside all day, running around the woods, playing in the lake, exploring the forest. When I talked about my future and someday having children at camp, I imagined myself as a calm, earthy mom who would allow her children to roam free, wind in their hair, playing in the dirt, carefree, outdoorsy. But now, I have this perfect doll like baby and all I want to do is find a giant plastic bubble and hover over him every second of the day.

I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night thinking about sunburn, bug bites, poison ivy, germy campers, dust and dirt and I just can’t imagine my perfect, pristine baby getting dirty.

The great thing about pre-camp is that it is an adjustment period that allows me to ease back into life in the woods. And the problem with not actually being at pre-camp is that I am not in the adjustment phase, I’m in the anxiety phase and that’s not going to get better until I get to camp. 

Work Weekend

I have loved this camp for almost 9 years now. I have often compared it to a marriage- I’ve loved camp for better and for worse, the good times and bad. I love everything about camp, including all of it’s flaws- bugs, dirt, weather- it’s all part of camp’s charm. I love this place so much and I don’t even see the flaws.

And then I brought a baby to camp.

I read a description of a kid who got glasses for the first time, looking at a tree and being in awe of all the leaves. Before glasses, the kid could only see a blur and when he could see clearly, it was then that all of the detail was clear for the first time.

This weekend was work weekend and the first time I’ve been back to camp since I left in August. And the first time I brought Baby X to camp.

It was like I was seeing camp for the first time with glasses. I could see every spec of dirt. I felt like my eyesight was superhuman and I was able to see microscopically. And oh was it terrifying! Every surface needed to be scrubbed, every piece of furniture was covered in germs from a million sweaty, dirty people sitting down, every nook and cranny seemed to be filled with bacteria and mold and germs and dirt and every other terrible thing you shouldn’t be near.

I walked into the staff house and held onto my baby as tightly as I’ve ever held him, looking around at filth, thinking, “I will never be able to put him down”.

Eventually I calmed down a little bit. Work weekend was a huge success- great weather, hard working volunteers, lots of projects completed. X was happy to look around while strapped to my chest and I tried to take deep breaths and reach deep inside myself to find the love that has burned so passionately all of these years for the place that I consider my second home.

This should be a very interesting summer…