It was only about three weeks ago that my mom sent around her annual email to the kids that said, "Please send me your Christmas newsletter blurb." I always look forward to reading our own newsletter even though it is only about my family. There seems to be insight that I don't get from the other interactions with siblings. I also get a chance to try to live up to their accomplishments. Of course, now my siblings have children so I'm the nomad until I produce children as well (which seems to be quite a ways off).
That being said, welcome to 2010 ladies and gentlemen. When we last left off, I was preparing to head back to Alabama for another semester at my outdoor education program. The semester turned into a year. The staff turned into yet another phenomenal family who even though we've had some rocky times since, I would still trust each and every one of them with my life.
Summer 2010 was built to be the best summer of all. The Titanic of summer: unsinkable. It was destined to be awesome...Well, the Titanic sunk and so did my summer. And it wasn't the broken elbow. Or maybe the elbow was the iceberg that broke the ship. I'm not sure where that analogy was going but I do know that after about four weeks of summer, it tanked. My attitude plummeted as well as those around me (we do all live with one another after all) and I swore up and down again that 2010 would be my last summer at camp. I couldn't take it any more. It wasn't worth it...
And then the kids. It's always the kids who bring me back. 'Round about the time I was having my most vigilant protestations to ever returning to the place, two of the girls who I have had as campers with since they were in the fourth grade (who are now rising 8th graders) stopped me and said, "Ruby, you are coming back next year right? You have to come back."
Now I know they tell this to every counselor and that it's their way of making camp more comfortable each year when they return. I remember what it was like when I returned to my church camp that I had been attending summer after summer and there were almost no familiar faces on the staff. All the status I had worked to gain, the rapport with the counselors, the traditions that I knew...they were all gone. I know that their plea for me to return is a lot about their own self-preservation, but that's what always brings me back to camp is the kids.
I don't feel I made the time for the kids this summer like I needed to. I feel that I got so caught up in staff drama that for the first summer in a while, I truly lost sight of why I was there. And in the end, I lost all my fight. I gave up. It was worse than just giving up. I didn't care. And that hurt, but I let it go on and on to the point where I couldn't wait to get away. I couldn't even begin to mend what went wrong this summer because it hurt to much. It hurt even more when Cody tried to pull me out of my funk by fighting back at me with "You don't care? That's the very attitude we are trying to end every single day here among the staff." MY camp home--had I outgrown it? Was I expecting too much? Camp could go on without me anyway. I know that. It did for all the hours that I was in physical therapy mending my elbow. It goes on without me during leadership training and program training when I'm not there.
I almost couldn't get away from there fast enough. I worked a group here and there to earn the last little bit of cash, but I swore it was the last time...that I would go elsewhere this summer. Where? Who knows? But somewhere, anywhere else.
An opportunity arose for me to attend a regional camp conference. I jumped at the opportunity, and my OE boss was kind enough to let me out for 24 hours to go present at this conference. I would find a new boss, a new camp home, a new place to serve. But as I met other directors and heard about their programs, it was overwhelmingly clear how phenomenal our program is and how amazing my directors are, and how I needed to go back.
I'm sure you are screaming at your computer screen "NO! Don't do it!" and it comes rushing back to me occasionally too. But some of the issues have been addressed and can, at least at the beginning, try to be improved. There is big change within the structuring of camp this summer too. Change that needs to be supported. Change that can lead to opportunity. And time and time again over the course of the year, I have found that the skills that I have developed at camp have been life skills. Skills that I can use in other jobs and in other areas of my life. I can't deny what camp has given me. I've given a lot to camp but it deserves better than what I gave last summer.
All this being said, I needed this fall to be amazing. I needed our OE program to have that community of like-minded people, people who I would trust with my life. I had a great fall season, but it wasn't the community of our staff that made it great...well not in the sense that community has supported me before. No, it was once again the kids. It's always the kids.
They were eager to learn though they claim to hate thinking. They are forgiving and admiring even when I make mistake. They can be so brutally honest and so innocently kind. I learn from them each day and some days I wish I had a few minutes more to give them the opportunities to learn and explore that they don't get on a daily basis. I want to make them think and appreciate what they have been given.
I grew closer to some of the staff than I have before and I definitely would trust and have trusted some of them with my life. Others seem to pass in and hold a mirror up to some of my greatest flaws--the very flaws that I have to work out to make 2011 end better than 2010 did. The kids show me what I do well. The staff shows me what I need to fix. I fear that the spring might end up like fall 2010 did but I know too that I can make moves toward fixing what's broken and setting our new kids up for success.
There is work to be done no doubt. Though it seems I have finally secured a retail job for the holidays, when I'm not cranking away for the man, I'm going to be fixing me. I've been SO lucky this last year. I'm sure that my luck is about to run out--it must be. And when it does, I have to be ready to help those around to me success nonetheless. I can't give up. I can't fight back. I just have to ride the wave until next December when it's time for my newsletter blurb again. What will come in the next year? Can I make it work? Will the kids be happy to see me back? Will they demand that I commit to 2012 right then and there?
I've always been a vicious cycle kind of girl. I "do" for nine months of the year and "think" for the other three. Time to start thinking kids...
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