Camp Director/Mom

All of the staff (not the lead staff, but the counselors and support staff) get one night off per week. It starts after dinner-midnight. Wednesday night is Nanny’s night off. After dinner, X and I had our normal routine of bath, facetime with daddy, a bottle and bed. Once he was asleep, I wrote the daily camp blog entry, answered some emails and then the power went out.

No power means no water, so washing bottles, taking a shower and making a hot cup of tea were no longer on my to-do list. I actually have a few things to work on that don’t require internet, so I sat in my dark house and started typing, hoping the power would come back soon.

The power goes out a lot at camp, but it never gets any easier. Tonight was supposed to be the all camp dance party, and so I knew that ‘A’ and ‘M’ were going to have to find an alternative activity for 90 kids. We’ve done it before, and it’s all part of camp, and I knew they would be fine, but I was frustrated that I was sitting in my house instead of helping them plan. I could hear them talking back and forth on the walkie talkies and besides just the power outage changing the schedule at the last minute, I could hear ‘A’ being asked to deal with other issues.

And then ‘A’ came to my door. Camper J had hurt his knee during relays earlier in the evening and he heard a “pop” and couldn’t walk. Camper M had gotten mad at another girl in her cabin and slapped, then kicked her. ‘A’ came to my house to ask if I could come help.

X was asleep and the dining hall is probably about a football field distance away from my house. It’s not far and I wasn’t going to be gone long, but leaving him alone is not a good idea. I know that. I imagined him waking up and screaming and me not being there. I imagined someone sneaking in and stealing him. I imagined an unexpected tornado to pick up my house and carry it away with him inside.

I left him anyway.

I sat and talked with the hitter/kicker. She was sobbing when I got there. ‘A’ had sufficiently scared her into thinking she might have to go home and of course, the worse threat of all, going to get me. It’s a funny threat, because it is the ultimate worst case scenario that staff use, but I am always calm, nice and even when they really did something bad, I am usually pretty understanding and try to connect with them. But it’s a scary threat anyway, and she was crying, so I spent a little time talking to her about other ways she could have handled it and warning her that if she did anything like that again, she would go home. We called mom. We had a nice chat. She calmed down. She went back to her cabin.

Then I went upstairs and looked at the injured kid’s knee. It hurt, he couldn’t put pressure on it. Mom wanted him to go to the doctor.

‘A’ took Assistant Program Director M with her, got the camp van and they headed off to the ER. This is the first ER visit in 9 years that I am not there for. ‘A’ has been with me to most of the previous trips and she knows what to do. It’s a small hospital- you check in, give them the kid’s health form, sit with the kid and wait while the doctor checks them out. I don’t need to be there for it, but I always have been so it’s weird to stay home.

I checked in with “M” who was getting ready to send the kids back to their cabins without showering or brushing their teeth (since we have no water). She had a few staff filling water jugs with the water that was left in the pipes so that kids could fill their water bottles and then she was going to give the speech about how they wouldn’t be able to flush the toilets after going to the bathroom.

She was handling it and everything was under control. I had only been gone about 15 minutes. I wanted to stay in the dining hall and help manage everything, but I knew I needed to get back to my sleeping baby. He was fine- no screaming, no kidnappers, no tornado, just a peacefully sleeping baby in a dark house with no power.

I am struggling to adjust to being a camp director and a mom. Camp is running well. Despite all of the challenges tonight, everything was under control and kids were having a great time. I don’t need to be the one doing everything in order for camp to run.