Camp Nurse (24 page)

It didn’t sound like it had too many rules and prohibitions.
Judaism Lite
. Perhaps this was the Goldilocks camp I’d been looking for. A religious camp, yes, but open-minded. Neither fly-by-night and spartan nor ostentatious and fancy. It might be
juuuust right
. I agreed to meet with Rudy at his office the next day.

As I got off the elevator in the building where the camp office was located, I was greeted by a dog. He was a mangy mutt – beagle and Lab mix, I guessed – who must have had some sheepdog in him, too, because he herded me down the hall to his master’s messy, cluttered office. I found Rudy sitting in a canoe on the floor beside his desk, smoothing the inside of it with some sort of a tool. He got up to greet me and introduce his dog, Ringo. Rudy was a short, middle-aged man with a long, silver ponytail. He was wearing blue jeans, a psychedelic tie-dye T-shirt, and unappealing white socks with sandals, standard camp style. Rudy’s cramped, crowded office was filled with a jumble of camping gear, musical instruments, and equipment.
It looked like he was having a garage sale. There was a junked-up desk, a tangle of life jackets on the floor, a pile of unfolded tents, and guitars and guitar cases lined up against the wall, beside music stands covered in sheet music. The wall behind his desk was crowded with plaques, diplomas, and inspirational sayings, some hanging lopsided. A few caught my eye.

I tried to decipher a quote from the Talmud written in old-fashioned Hebrew, but I knew only a smattering of the modern, spoken language. “What does that one say?”

“Something to the effect that a father’s job is to teach his son how to swim. I take it to mean that as parents we have a responsibility to teach our children how to survive. Yeah, that’s what camp’s about.”

He told me about himself. He’d grown up in a strictly religious
family but had rejected the Orthodox way of Judaism. He and his wife – they’d met at camp – got into drugs and yoga and gone off to India to live in an ashram. Unfortunately, she had died of cancer a few years ago, but in his year of mourning, through the daily recitation of the traditional prayer for the dead with a small community of other mourners, he’d “found his way back.” He paused to turn the tables. “How ’bout you?” He looked at me skeptically. “You don’t strike me as a camp person.”

How could he tell? I’d managed to fool Carson. I told Rudy about my previous summers as a camp nurse and my professional qualifications. What he didn’t ask and I didn’t mention, because it didn’t seem like a requirement, was that I didn’t go to synagogue, didn’t keep kosher, and I wasn’t about to start. I hadn’t rejected Judaism so much as I’d never really embraced it, certainly not the rules or rituals of it anyway. My father had been an involved member of a Reform synagogue, but for him Judaism was a cerebral exercise. He loved to tussle over intellectual questions and debate issues but he didn’t practise many of the observances. My mother told me repeatedly that she was against all organized religions and warned me against religion like it was something harmful. “If there were no religions, the world would be a better place,” she often said. Surprisingly, in her last few semi-lucid years, she turned to the Baha’i faith, because, as she put it, “it’s about love.”

“Tell me about the campers,” I asked.

Rudy picked up one end of the canoe and caressed the wood. He looked like he wanted to get back to working on it. “It’s a diverse group. We have kids from wealthy families, from middle-class families, along with children who are subsidized by philanthropic organizations like the United Way. Kids who live in mansions, and others who live in public housing. We have children who are in foster care. Kids from interfaith households. Kids from same-sex parents. Kids from Jamaica, India and
Ethiopia, and China. Every summer we host a contingent of counsellors from Israel. Most kids are Jewish, but not all. Oh, I almost forgot.” He put down the canoe. “I should explain about our inclusion program. We have campers with various needs and abilities and we help them integrate into camp life.”

“Together with the so-called normal ones?” How well I knew how needy “normals” could be.

“The new term for ‘normal’ kids is ‘typicals.’ At Camp Sol we have some campers and staff who have special needs. We do everything we can to help every kid enjoy camp to the fullest of his or her ability. We have specialized staff to support our vision of inclusion.”

“You mean to help the special needs kids?”

“Not just them. There are lots of situations at camp in which someone might feel they don’t fit in, don’t you agree?” I nodded. “Off the top of my head …” Rudy closed his eyes to better help him recall the kids who had special needs because he clearly didn’t think of them as different from all the other campers. “We have a twelve-year-old coming for the first time this summer. He’s been recently diagnosed with diabetes and uses an insulin pump. The head of tennis is a paraplegic. He’s competed in the Paralympics and gets around that court pretty fast in an electric wheelchair. We have a few staff with Down Syndrome who assist the counsellors. We have kids with Tourette’s and a few with varying degrees of autism.” He scratched his head to help him come up with the others. “We’ve got a fair share of kids who may act a bit strange, but everyone finds a way to fit in. Oh, yeah, we have a kid who uses a wheelchair and comes with an attendant who lives with him in the cabin with the other boys his age. I can’t understand a word he says but the kids do.”

“Aren’t there camps for children with special needs?”

“Our parents say they don’t want their kids segregated because
of their medical diagnosis. The kids themselves don’t see it as a problem. It’s just the way they are.”

“I guess it’s good for them to be there.”

“At first, that’s what I thought, too, but I’ve discovered it’s even better for us.” He thought about it. “It has an interesting effect on the other campers. They step up and take on more leader ship. I also think it makes them behave better.”

“What about bullying? How do you handle it?” Since he didn’t seem to have any questions for me, I interviewed
him
.

“Bullying isn’t a big issue at Camp Sol. Maybe praying together with their friends makes kids a little less likely to be cruel.” He went on to explain that they provided anti-bullying training for the counsellors and had a rule that a counsellor stayed in the cabin every evening, a time when bullying often occurred and homesickness peaked. “The main thing is that every child feel included. Camp Sol isn’t perfect, but we work at it. On most days, it’s pretty darn good.”

“What about the prayers and the study sessions? Don’t the kids complain?”

“They complain a lot,” he said with a playful grin, “about the food and the mosquitoes, but I’ve never heard them complain about a day of rest. What’s there to complain about? We can all use that. Camp can get pretty hectic, as you probably know.”

In theory, a day of rest wasn’t a bad idea. Like most nurses, I didn’t have set days off work. They occurred willy-nilly. My “week end” could easily be a Tuesday-Wednesday. My days off were spent recovering from night shift, shopping for groceries, or attacking my “to do” list of chores and errands that I didn’t get to the rest of the week. But a
mandated
day of rest? I didn’t know about that. I recalled how the counsellors at Camp Na-Gee-La had ridiculed religion. “Praying?” Mike, the director, had scoffed. “What’s that all about? Is that like God’s your imaginary friend?” Yet, I also recalled the discomfiting feeling I’d had
when “God” was uttered at that farewell campfire at Camp Carson. For me, something had been missing at both of those camps, but was it God? How would my kids take to going to a camp where they would have to study and pray? Well, I may have opted out of religion, but I hadn’t turned away from spirituality. “I guess it’ll be good for my kids,” I said to Rudy.

“That’s Pediatric Judaism.” He looked at me askance, like he was suddenly having second thoughts about my suitability.

Well, perhaps a dose of religion would do me good, too. I’d call it Medicinal Judaism.

Rudy went off on a new tangent. “When you think about it, camp is a shock for kids these days. Sometimes I’m amazed at how they cope with it at all.” He started getting restless; puttering around with papers on his messy desk, making me realize our meeting was drawing to a close. “We throw a bunch of city kids together in the middle of the forest, cut them off from their electronic gadgets, put fifteen or so together in close quarters. Some have never shared a bedroom before. For many, camp is the first time they meet kids from another neighbourhood or from a different school. It’s a huge adjustment.”

I noticed he hadn’t mentioned “safety,” even once, and I asked him about it.

“If safety is what parents are after, they’d better keep their kids home,” he said dismissively. He picked up a wooden paddle, walked over to his canoe, stepped into it, and kneeled down like he was ready to push off from shore. “All of our attempts to keep kids safe are creating the most worried, anxious, stressed-out kids I’ve ever met. The only way to keep kids safe is to teach them how to look after themselves. Those are survival skills.” He pointed back at the quote from the Talmud, hanging on the wall. “We’re all so safety conscious these days, yet no one’s feeling any safer. Camp’s a place to learn how to take risks and confront difficulties, a place where kids can go wild, yet still be under our
wing.” He smoothed his hands over the wood along the inside of the canoe. “Hey, man, do the math. When you add it up, the number of camp hours is greater than school hours, considering it’s round the clock, weekends, too, especially if they stay for the whole summer. Think of the opportunity to impart some good values to our kids. Sure, there’s fun, but we can do much more than keep them safe and entertained.”

I liked Rudy and what he’d told me about the camp. The sight of that canoe was enticing to me, too. I could feel it luring me back in … to camp.

“Okay, I’ll come, but on one condition.”

“Shoot.”

“I don’t have to go to prayer services.”

“Hey, no pressure, man,” Rudy said, backing off, his hands up as he and Ringo walked me to the door. “Do your own thing.”

“One last question,” I said, just before leaving. “What about candy? What’s your policy there?”

“Two tuck shop visits per week and lots of treats, but no candy or junk food from home. They don’t need it and it attracts critters, especially bears. Camp Solomon is right in the heart of bear country.” He said all that seriously but couldn’t resist slipping back to his usual big, sunny grin.

It was the summer of Crocs! It seemed like just about everyone had a pair of those stubby, rubber clogs that came in every colour of the rainbow. (To me, they looked more like toys than shoes.) Harry didn’t want them but Max wanted a pair in every colour. He settled on two pairs – bright yellow ones that made him look like Donald Duck (at least he could be spotted all over camp) and turquoise ones that he promptly gave away to his new friend, Ryan, underneath him on the lower bunk.

No Crocs for me. This time I wasn’t going to dress to fit in – and as it turned out I didn’t need to. Camp Solomon fit me as easily and comfortably as a pair of Crocs. They say “three’s the charm,” and maybe it’s true. At this camp, it didn’t take me long to find my groove. One of the reasons was that here were people my own age to play with. They were adult staff, or “inclusion co-ordinators,” who helped the special needs kids, as well as the ordinary needs ones, to cope with camp. There were also visiting rabbis, cantors, and educators, many of whom came with their young families. The babies in high chairs and toddlers running around outside the dining hall gave the place the feeling of family. I enjoyed having adult company and sitting together at our own table, and I think we lent a certain
gravitas
to the mealtime mayhem.

Like Max, I also made an instant new friend. Her name was Alice Gordon and she wore lavender Crocs. A public health nurse with two daughters at camp, she had also left her husband back in the city while she worked to cover the cost of camp for her children. Together with Louise Mandel (navy Crocs), the camp doctor, who came with her teenaged boys to camp, we were the health care team.

Not called the infirmary as at Camp Na-Gee-La, nor the Medical Centre as at Camp Carson, at Camp Solomon it was the Health Centre, or, as the kids called it, the Health Hut. The name itself gave it a positive spin. Nearby, Alice and I had our own quarters, clean, simple dorm rooms. It didn’t take long to familiarize myself with the layout of Camp Solomon. Around the periphery, nestled in the woods, were the camper cabins, connected by paths that converged onto a main road that led to the central gathering spot, “the Tent,” which provided shade, and with the flaps up, a breeze. The dining hall was a polygon-shaped building with windows on all sides that ran right up to the ceiling, providing a view of leafy green trees, a wide expanse of sky, and the clean, sparkling lake.

At this camp, morning pill call was handled differently than at Camp Carson. Campers were expected to come to
us
for their meds. The onus was on them and their counsellors to make sure they got their meds, rather than on us to track them down. They were good about coming and, perhaps because they wanted to get to breakfast, they usually arrived on time.