I never had a summer where I didn’t do anything.
From the time I was six years old up until I turned fifteen, I went to this secluded summer camp in the middle of the mountains, surrounded by trees and encircling a lake. Cabins on either side of camp with this huge dining hall connecting the boys’ and girls’ sides of camp together.
In retrospect, it’s the most magical place I’ve ever been to.
For these eight years, I learned how to shoot an arrow and how to play guitar. How to make friendship bracelets, lizard keychains, and friendships. How to live with other girls in an enclosed space, what to pack on trips, and how to prepare myself for days and weeks ahead by myself.
This past year, instead of the student, I became the teacher after being away from the camp for two years.
If you’re on staff, you get there a week early to train. What happens if your camper gets stung by a bee, gets knocked cold in the middle of football, or has a nervous breakdown in the middle of the cabin? You have seven days to figure it out.
You are also given a note card where you write down your preferences. Who do you want to spend your nights off with, what activities do you want to supervise, and what age group you find yourself comfortable working with. You may get these preferences, you may not.
For the last question pertaining to age range, I chose third graders. Eight to ten-year-old nuggets. During the first session of camp, I got the rising middle schoolers instead.
Being a first-year counselor after several years of camp, most of them being before high school, it was this surreal thing to be the big sister of seven girls one part of the summer and eleven the next. I’m too old now to tell you what it was like being a camper at the age of eight, or even at the age of eleven.
What I can tell you was this: every single camper I had was vastly different from the last. All from different walks of life, different living situations, and had different ways of growing. The week camp started, my fellow counselors and I had four girls to start with; the first four campers I ever had and will always remember the most.
First, there was Eads, who was literally the coolest child in the world. She had this pet chameleon her mom would always send her pictures of and she slept above me in the bunk bed we shared; she would constantly freak me out with this stuffed raccoon she would hide in my covers or toss at my slumbering body at two in the morning to see what would happen.
Then I had Grace, whose two older brothers were in camp the same time as her. She liked talking about two things: how gross she thought it was that all of the girls at camp had a crush on her brothers, and how cool her birthday party was last year. “We had a cotton candy machine and everything. I’m actually serious. We did.”
There was Kay, the most hyper of the four, who I personally checked in at camp. I helped her move her things in, shook hands with the parents, took her to her lice check, the whole thing. We truly bonded that day. Sort of. We didn’t have a choice.
And lastly, there was Erin, who didn’t talk as much but everyone went to her for advice anyway. She won the staring contests every meal at our table and got at least six letters a day from home, writing at least ten a day right back.
I learned so much from these four girls, all of them coming from different areas of the country and varying levels of maturity. Literally all I remember from when I was eleven was that I was, for lack of a better term, angry. Just perpetually confused. I just couldn’t enjoy myself because, in a way, I was scared to.
On my bad days, I’m still like that.
When you have clinical depression and your job is to make sure that the children you’re monitoring are safe and happy, there’s always this feeling of doubt. “Am I doing this right? Are my kids having a good time?”
Then there’s, of course, the pessimism. “No, I’m doing such a horrible job. Why hasn’t this camp fired me yet?”
On my bad days, it would wreck me. I would just have to go outside and cry for a bit, feel the breeze rush through my hair and look out at the lake I went to every summer afternoon for eight years. Go sit on the porch of the dining hall where Ben taught me how to play guitar despite my impatience with it. Sit out in the archery range where Danny taught me how to shoot an arrow, even when I was too small for a bow. Meditate in the supply closet of arts and crafts where Sloan would grab beads and string whenever I wanted to make bracelets even when I was supposed to be making duct-tape wallets.
Being a counselor, I aspired to be just like the people who taught me the impossible and that I should actually enjoy life instead of floundering in it. Be a Ben, a Danny, a Sloan. It was this level of grace and perfection that seemed unreachable, as I had this idea that my campers hated me and I never made a mark on the camp at all. I would burn the candle on both ends and try so hard.
One night changed my perspective completely.
A few days before the first session of camp ended, just as I was getting ready for bed and trying to help my co-counselors corral everyone to their bunks, I found a card on my pillow with my name scribbled on it. I opened it and read it. It was from Erin.
It read:
Zoe,
Thank you for keeping my face always smiling! You always know what to say and your positivity and patience flows through camp! I will always look up to you! For me, please never stop your quirky personality! Happy 4th of July!
I love you!
-Erin
Needless to say, I cried. To know that one child, one sweet and amazing child who was so well-behaved and kind, looked up to me and had this unconditional love for what I did was enough for me. I made a child’s summer. I made her happy. Made an impact.
I remember every single counselor I ever had during my eight years of camp by their names and what they did for me and my fellow campers. The patience, the grace, the skills they taught us. Being a counselor this past summer, like my own counselors, I learned skills as I went along.
Be happy. Enjoy myself. Remember how wonderful of a place this is and help my campers make memories. The Eads, the Graces, the Kays and the Erins.
All I hope was that, to them, I was a Zoe.
I still have the note that Erin wrote me, where she wrote this quote on the back:
“Why fit in when you’re born to stand out?” -Dr. Suess
And when I read that quote, I realized that it was enough for me to be a Zoe.
