Camp Nurse (26 page)

Every day after lunch was camp-wide rest time and everyone was supposed to be in their cabin, but sometimes I would find thirteen-year-old Dylan pacing around outside my door. “Can I help you?” I’d ask, but “No, I’m good,” he’d say, and run off. I could tell he was trying to place me. I remembered very well where we’d met – the
ICU
where I worked – but decided to keep quiet about what might be a traumatic memory for him. I told him simply, “I’m here if you want to talk.”

Mitchell was a more eager visitor who stopped by frequently with minor complaints or just to chat. He was thirteen, overweight, and more at ease with grown-ups than with kids his own age. The Health Centre was a refuge for him. He came so often that we kidded him we were going to make him our mascot. Mitchell often looked sad so I asked him how things were going.

“Camp’s awesome,” he said with forced cheerfulness. “My cabin mates are cool, well, except for Eddie. No one likes Eddie.” His face clouded over as he told me that Eddie picked on him, called him names like “fat-boy,” “wuss,” and “Mitchy Mouse,” and said degrading things about his sister. Then Mitchell abruptly changed the topic and made disparaging jokes about his looks or his weight, such as he was so fat that when he got into the lake, the water level rose. “I’ve tried diets, but they never work,” he said helplessly. He was worried about an upcoming canoe trip and if he’d be able to keep up, and what he’d do if he got hungry. On another occasion, he told me, “I’m starting to think I should go home.” Mitchell settled into one of the couches and made himself comfortable. “I’m thinking maybe I won’t stay for the whole summer.” He said it like going home was an option, but we both knew his parents had signed him up until the end of August. “See, I hate the position I’m in. If I go home, I feel like a failure, but if I stay, I feel horrible. Camp isn’t for me. There’s no privacy and it’s just go, go, go, all the time and, Eddie … well, he and I don’t get along.”

I felt a swell of affection for him. He enjoyed mountain biking and when I mentioned that, he visibly brightened. We talked about how Lance Armstrong had used his bike to conquer cancer and maybe he could do the same with his homesickness? Mitchell seemed to cheer up a bit with that idea and went off in a better mood, for now.

Another camper I was becoming fond of was Amy. She was a bright, creative twelve-year-old who had high-functioning autism. I’d seen her around camp, sometimes with her friends, other times standing alone, immersed in her own, very different world. Sometimes she’d stand and stare into the distance or peer down at the ground for a long time. Once I found her gazing into a single green leaf, chanting softly to herself, “back to leaves, back to leaves,” over and over. Occasionally she came to us describing “weird sensations” in her body that bothered her. They usually went away on their own if we helped her take her mind off them.

Once her counsellor brought Amy in. “Amy didn’t eat a thing at lunch,” she said, looking worried, “well, only the parmesan cheese. That’s all she put on her plate, a huge pile of parmesan cheese, but she just picked at that and kept rolling her eyes right back in her head, you know like this.” She did a frighteningly good imitation. “It was freaking me right out – I mean, it was weird, even for you, Amy, no offence.” She put her arm around Amy, which must have cued her to realize her counsellor was kidding, so after an awkward delay, she gave a little laugh.

Amy didn’t usually volunteer much information, but that day, she did want to explain what was bothering her. “I was thinking about mud and when I think about mud, I can’t eat.” She gazed around the room, averting her eyes from us when she spoke. “I can only eat white foods and they can’t touch each other.” She spoke in chopped sentences and a monotone, saying each word in a sentence like it was on a list, every item of equal value. As if
suddenly overcome with exhaustion, Amy moved over to the couch in her strange, floating way, stretched out and stared up at the ceiling, quietly describing its topography to herself. It was as if she had become the object of her rapt attention, just as I’d seen with the leaf, or another time with a handful of sand. Mud disturbed Amy greatly but she loved sand. I’d seen her sitting for hours on the beach running her fingers through the sand, chortling happily to herself. We decided to let her rest for the afternoon until she was ready to join her cabin again.

I was beginning to expand my notions of what to expect in a child; there were many different ways to be normal, and clearly there was a spectrum of normalcy. I enjoyed being at a camp that managed to accommodate a wide range of kids with a variety of abilities and to find ways to live and play together.

It was turning into a pleasant summer. Alice, Louise, and I worked well together and were a great team. Other than at meals, I didn’t see much of Rudy, the camp director. He was either at the canoe docks with Ringo, his constant companion, or in his camp office, which was just as cluttered with equipment and repair jobs on the go as his city office had been.

Rudy was a quiet leader but he made his presence felt. I remember an incident in the dining hall. After each meal music was played, usually a pop or rock song, which was the signal to get up and clear the tables. As soon as the music started, the kids jumped to their feet and boogied around the room, returning dishes to the counter, scraping plates, and stacking the cups and cutlery. Then, once they were back in their seats, they launched into a longer after-the-meal prayer, this one accompanied by banging the tables, stomping their feet, clapping their hands, and making motions, each corresponding to a line of the prayer. It was fun to be in the midst of it all and I even
found myself joining in from time to time. But one day, things got out of control. Kids were adding nonsense words and making rude gestures. Rudy got up and strode to the front of the room. When he spoke, his voice was so strong he didn’t need to use the microphone.

“Stop!” he said sternly and silence fell. “This is a prayer, not merely a song. We’re going to start over from the beginning. Pounding on the table is okay. Shouting is okay. Making noise is okay. But changing the words or making fun of it is not okay.” Afterward, he kept the counsellors back. “Your kids are watching you. They take their cue from you,” he reminded them. “If you show respect, they will, too.”

It never happened again.

Most afternoons, Alice and I locked up and went for a walk along a trail in the woods, staying in touch with a walkie-talkie that one of us always carried. Alice was a true nature lover who appreciated the outdoors in a way I was still learning to. She was always looking around, seeing everything we encountered with a sense of wonder and delight, as if we had entered a museum full of exquisite and precious things. She showed me the delicate colours and intricate striations inside a strip of birchbark that had peeled off the tree. Once, she stopped me just in time from treading upon a large frog sitting on the path in front of us. It had huge, bulging eyes, a pulsating neck, and was so perfectly camouflaged I had almost missed it. Another time, she pointed out a bird that was chasing a persistent chipmunk away from its nest. “What chipmunk eats birds?” I asked.

“She’s protecting her eggs,” Alice explained.

“How do you see these things? I walk right past them.”

“You’re a city girl,” Alice said with a chuckle.

You only see what you know
. Kitch’s words came back to me.

As we walked, Alice and I fell easily into intimate conversation as if we’d been friends for years. She told me about her marriage to a Jewish man and her conversion to Judaism. She hadn’t converted at her husband’s request nor to appease her in-laws but because she was sincerely drawn to the Jewish religion. She loved going to services at camp and felt the prayers and songs in a deeply spiritual way.

The daily services were held in an outdoor chapel in a clearing in the woods. I usually took that time to phone home to Ivan or to catch up with paperwork quietly in the Health Centre. But one day, when it wasn’t in use, I went to the chapel by myself to take a closer look. Nestled in the forest, it consisted of a simple wood podium facing benches made of long, heavy logs, arranged in concentric half-circles. Interspersed among the benches were tall trees that provided shade and a canopy of leaves and branches. The blue lake could be seen through the trees. For a few minutes I sat by myself, enjoying the quiet and solitude that are usually so hard to find at camp.

Perhaps taking a few moments out of each day to express gratitude and to sit in quiet reflection did have a positive effect on all of us. Maybe it was, as Rudy had also suggested, that the presence of the special-needs children and staff brought out the best in the others. I think it also had something to do with Rudy himself. To Rudy, running a camp was a moral enterprise, not just a commercial business venture. The counsellors were a major influence, too. In many ways they were exactly like counsellors I’d met elsewhere – just as wild at night, just as mature or well-mannered, or
not
. However, counsellors here made an extra, concerted effort to ensure that each child was part of the group and no one was left out. These counsellors tried to be role models and leaders, not just babysitters or pals. On my first visit to a cabin, I saw a sign on the door, announcing, “Welcome to
our crib!” Posted inside the door was a list of rules the kids had come up with under the direction of their counsellors:

1. Express yourself, but don’t start drama.
   

2. Listen to one another.
   

3. Respect other people’s space.
   

4. Don’t touch anybody’s stuff unless you ask first.
   

5. Stay clean (showers, flush toilets, etc.).
   

6. Tell someone if you are going somewhere.
   

7. No swearing unless absolutely necessary.
   

8. No violence or rude gestures like flipping the bird.
   

“Yeah, like that’s all going to happen,” I heard one kid say scornfully as I stood reading the list. I agreed those rules probably weren’t going to be followed to the letter, but putting them in writing seemed like a good place to start.

I saw other examples of counsellors leading the way.

A spider was spotted in the dining hall and after the initial screams died down, I heard a counsellor’s calm voice. “Let’s take it outside and put it back into nature. That’s its home.” They all trooped after her to help her set it free.

I liked the gentle, low-pressure swim test and the way the staff referred to the ones who “hadn’t completed their swim test,
yet
,” rather than saying they’d failed.

There seemed to be an unstated acceptance that not every child was sporty or good-looking or popular. At this camp, a child didn’t need certain clothes, or to be “normal” or mainstream to fit in. Here, the attitude toward competition wasn’t the sloppy love-fest of “everyone’s a winner,” nor was it awards and accolades only for the outstanding athletes. I saw kids who didn’t get a lead role in the play or make a particular sports team and how their counsellors helped them roll with the punches. Here,
there was simple, modest recognition for achievement and also for trying your best. The message was, you can be whatever kind of kid you are; you can find something at which to shine.

When we discovered that Jake, a fifteen-year-old, had a bad case of lice and told him he’d have to go home to be treated, he was so angry he punched a door with his fist. “Please don’t make me leave. I’ll shave my head,” he pleaded. “I look forward to camp all year.” But when he heard that his little sister Jenny had lice too, and saw her crestfallen face, he changed his tune. “Sure, I’ll go home with you, Jennster,” he said, then explained to me, “Our dad works a lot and he won’t have time to take care of her hair.” He put his arm around her. “Don’t worry, Jenny-Benny, I’ll pick out the nits.”

As a parent, I’m lenient about bedtimes, negligent about homework, lackadaisical about unmade beds, junk food, and crumbs on the floor, but I’m a raging dictator when it comes to my kids being respectful, kind, and considerate. It’s practically the only “rule” in our household. Somehow, this camp had created a culture where kindness was the expectation. It was even expressed in writing. On a wall of names of sponsors of the camp, I read the inscription under a photograph of the Solomon family patriarch, a twinkly-eyed, distinguished-looking man: “Be Good to Each Other.”

And because I wasn’t needed in the Health Centre all the time, I got out and met everyone. Rudy’s daughter, Layla Schwartz, was the head tripper. She was studying environmental science at university and was exactly the kind of capable, take-charge person I’d want with me if I was out in the wilderness.
She’d get me home
, I thought. Layla referred to her specialty as “survival skills” and explained it to me. “It’s learning how to find your way home when you’re lost in foreign territory, tie the right knot to get the job done, build a secure shelter out of next to nothing,
feed yourself with potatoes you roasted over the fire, and make do with what you’ve got.” Layla knew a lot of useful information so I asked her about something I’d been wondering about. “What should I do if I’m in the forest and I see a bear?”

“Most important: don’t make eye contact. Bears feel confronted when you look into their eyes,” she said straightaway. “Get up on your tippy-toes to make yourself look as big as possible and spread your arms out. Also, make a lot of noise. Shout at it.”

“What should I say?” I asked, giggling.

“Go away, you bad bear!” she answered, giggling along with me.

Layla had an assistant named Alon, a husky, muscular guy who had a gentle manner and was great with the kids, especially the ones who were nervous about going out on a canoe trip. For a first-year counsellor, it was considered an achievement to be a tripper, so he must have proven himself to have made the grade.

Another rising star was Matti, the head song-leader who was something of a camp celebrity. His irresistible music and charismatic personality attracted all ages.

Seth was a terrific counsellor who had his hands full that particular summer with a challenging cabin that included Daniel, the boy with diabetes, Mitchell, who was miserably homesick, and Eddie, who was causing a lot of trouble.