It’s 7:20 in the morning when the sound of a bugle wakes me, quickly followed by an announcement: the flag-raising will be happening in 30 minutes. I wait until I hear the ten-minute warning before getting out of bed to get dressed. It’s simple: t-shirt, shorts. Then, I wash up. That’s simple too: I brush my teeth and splash water on my face. No makeup. I’m loving this. Camp is turning out to be even better the second time around.
I just finished my second season as a psychologist for two brother-sister camps in Fryeburg, Maine, a small town at the edge of New England’s White Mountains. The girls’ camp, Forest Acres, and I go back 47 years, when I was the camp doctor’s young daughter. Years later, I returned as a bona fide camper and kept coming for the next four. I never wanted to leave. Now, my three boys attend: Casey, 15, is finishing his seventh year at Indian Acres, the boys’ camp. Twelve-year-old twins Jake and Austin are on their third.
I have the boys’ father, John, to thank for my summertime gig. Driving home from Parent’s Weekend a few years ago, I lamented that my time at camp had been limited to just two days a year, and I resented being corralled with the “regular” parents and ushered out at the end of the day.
“I’m not like them,” I told John. “They’re supposed to leave at the end of Parent’s Weekend. I’m not. I belong here.”
“Then find a way to stay,” he replied. “You work with kids. They take on about 300 for seven weeks. I think you could convince them that they could use you around.”
So, I convinced them. It was an easy sell, since I’d gone to camp with the camp owners, directors, and head counselors decades earlier. We all won: I got a break in tuition, and they got help managing homesick, anxious, bossy, and timid campers—as did the counselors who lived with them. The challenge would be transposing the craft of therapy from 45-minute sessions in a suburban office to the casual, open-air setting of a summer camp. For me, it boiled down to two things: credibility and practicality. Relying only on my own person and no outer trappings, I’d need to establish myself as credible—someone the campers wouldn’t just follow, but trust. And whatever I offered needed to be practical—unobtrusive, clear, fast-acting, and fitting seamlessly within the rhythms of camp life.
I began by capitalizing on the factors available to me: proximity, immediacy, heightened emotional awareness, and shared community. I walked around the camp often, wanting to become a familiar face to as many campers and counselors as possible. I went swimming and riding and got up at dawn to go swimming while riding. I showed up at every breakfast, lunch, and dinner and dressed for Orange Day, Tube Sock Tuesday, and Color War. I was a living part of the community, and the deeper I dove into it, the more readily people approached me.
One of them was Jo, a new counselor from Australia, who’d been assigned to a very homesick camper named Haley.
“I don’t know what else to do,” she told me on the third night of camp. “I keep telling Haley how much fun she’s going to have and how many friends she’s going to make, but it doesn’t seem to help.”
“Homesickness is a tough mindset to shake off,” I replied. “The harder you try to talk people out of being homesick, the harder they try to convince you it’s worse than you think. I think you’ll have better luck if you encourage Haley to have a ‘good enough’ time here while she’s homesick.”
Jo looked at me quizzically. “What do you mean, ‘while she’s homesick’?”
I explained that sidestepping the tug-of-war over how homesick Haley felt would be the first step in reducing the homesickness’s power, both in their conversations and in Haley’s thoughts. “Plus,” I added, “Haley won’t think she has to first get over being homesick before she can have fun. And let her talk to you about her parents and her friends from home, Jo. It’s okay. Everyone’s trying so hard to get Haley’s mind off of home that it causes her to think about it even more. If Haley knows she can talk about what she misses and who, she might not need to continually bring up how homesick she feels.
Other kids had more challenging adjustments—even some of the veterans. Twelve-year-old Olivia was back for her fourth summer, expecting everything with her friends to be just as it had been the summer before. But her friends had changed, and she not as much—at least not in the same ways. They were into boys now, and looked forward to the Wednesday night co-ed dances. Olivia couldn’t have cared less. She longed for what had been: closely woven friendships that she and the girls had felt sure would last forever. She worried there was something wrong with her. “Maybe I’m a lesbian,” she confided in me one day. “I just don’t like the same things as everyone else in my cabin.” We walked past the tennis courts and sat down on a nearby bench.
“Where did you get the idea that all of you would always like the same things?” I asked once we’d sat down. Olivia looked up from the collection of pinecones she’d been gathering in her lap.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “We always have….”
I smiled softly, remembering how I too had wanted everything about camp to stay the same from one year to the next. “You know,” I said, “I used to come back to camp each summer hoping that everything would be exactly the same as the year before. Just like you.”
“Really?”
“Really,” I said. “Everything seemed so perfect here. I didn’t want anything to change.”
“So what happened?” Olivia asked.
“Well, it changed anyway. We changed, even though we tried not to. But you know what, Olivia?” I added brightly. “I found out that we could change and camp could still be really good.”
Olivia looked up at me, as if examining my face for the first time. “Olivia,” I said, “there are a million different ways to be 12. Finding out that you and your friends are interested in different things doesn’t have to mean anything more than that. But even if it did mean something more, that could be okay too. This summer can be very different from the others and still be a good summer.”
Olivia took a deep breath and nodded. We stood up together and wandered over to the barn. For the next half hour, Olivia followed me around camp, and when we ran into her cabinmates, she took off to join them as if she’d never doubted for a moment that they were still the best of friends.
***
Dinnertime arrived, and the dining hall was loud and cheery as usual. I was eating at one of the head tables when a counselor from Cabin Six—reserved for the eight-year-olds—approached. “Janet, can you come eat with us?” she asked. “Nina’s refusing to eat anything but dinner rolls. I keep suggesting all these things from the salad bar, but she says she doesn’t like anything there. It was the same thing last night: just rolls. An hour later, she’s hungry and wants the rest of her dinner. It’s driving all of us a little crazy.”
I knew Nina well. I’d already met with her a few times. She was the brightest, sharpest eight-year-old girl I’d ever met. She was very funny. She was also very bossy, attention-seeking, and exasperating. I once asked her why she thought she was having a tougher time adjusting to camp than many of the other girls her age. Not skipping a beat, she said, “Oh, it’s because I’m really selfish!” And with that, she skipped off to gymnastics.
I moved to the table where Cabin Six was having dinner and plopped down next to Nina. “Let me at these rolls,” I said. Nina eyed me carefully, preparing for what she was sure would turn into a dinnertime joust. I grabbed a roll and chomped down.
“They’re better with butter,” she said, watching my face.
“Always are,” I mumbled.
“Is that all you’re eating?” Nina asked.
“I don’t know yet,” I replied, chasing my roll down with some bug juice. “I was thinking about checking out the salad bar.” I glanced over at the spread of fruits and vegetables, tuna and eggs. Then I went back to my roll.
“Oh,” was all Nina said. She seemed disappointed that I hadn’t asked her to join me on a salad bar run. I wondered if maybe she’d been looking forward to turning me down.
“Well, are you going?” she asked me, baffled.
“I don’t know,” I replied, looking at my roll to see where to bite next.
“Oh, come on,” Nina growled, grabbing my hand. She pulled me out of my chair and over to the salad bar, where, promptly and without fanfare, she seized two plastic bowls and thrust one of them into my hand while filling the other for herself.
***
The next day, I found myself eating lunch at the boys’ camp. It’s a different universe. The sound level is fifty decibels higher, and nobody bothers using the tongs in the serving dishes because nobody cares whose hands have mangled the hot dog rolls—or the hot dogs themselves. Announcements by the head counselor are met with thunderous applause, and when Ray—who’s been playing the piano here every summer since I was 12 years old—sits down on the bench and starts running his fingers along the keys, and a hundred-plus boys surround him and throw their arms around one another and start singing songs that my own lips remember without me, I think to myself, Wow, this is what community can do. A kind and generous one like this brings people together not by grabbing them and holding them captive, but by becoming so deserving of their collective devotion that it becomes magnetic.
People from all over the world love these two camps. They take care of them and keep finding ways to come back. And, in an act of seeming grace, this community rewards its constituents with something rare and stunning: opportunities to be taken to places of awe and soaring, unencumbered affection all summer long. What a gift.
I was at the boys’ camp to follow up with Jack. Ten years old and now in his second year at camp, Jack was the kind of kid that other kids love to hate. He sought attention of any kind. He bragged to his cabinmates. He patronized the counselors. He threw tantrums when he lost. Jack’s two counselors, Adam and Nick—who lived with him 24/7—wanted to know what I could do to get this kid to chill.
Here, my advice needed to leverage Jack’s interest in being recognized within the camp community into serving as a motivator for change. Talking with Jack directly would be a waste of time, because I didn’t matter to him. But the community had something that did matter to him but that he couldn’t muscle: its regard. Jack would earn that only by becoming more thoughtful about the impact of his behavior on the people around him, and altering it.
To that end, I discouraged Jack’s counselors from “diluting” the effects of his braggadocio and insensitive remarks with humor designed to deflect attention away from them—the default behavior management technique many adults use when they feel challenged by disobedient children. Instead, I urged the counselors to respond firmly but understatedly whenever Jack said or did anything they didn’t like. Even a simple phrase like, Not cool, Jack, would do. The idea was to communicate that they were no longer going to pretend that what Jack had done or said didn’t take place—and to communicate that it wasn’t funny either. I explained to Adam and Nick that, over time, their comments would create a self-awareness in Jack, even if it was only from his frustration at being interrupted so often. He’d begin to anticipate the counselors’ interjections, which would mean he was starting to think about what he was going to do before he did it. He might still go ahead and do it, but he could no longer do it the same way — that is, unmindfully.
I hoped that the communal response to Jack’s annoying behavior would awaken just enough of his self-consciousness that it would begin inhibiting his hijinks. Coupled with Jack’s discovery that dropping the attitude meant the other kids liked having him around more, I wondered whether this would change how he related with his peers and with the adults around him. As it turned out, it did.
***
Every year, a few campers wind up going home early. Nina was one of them. She needed more structure and supervision than we could provide. She was wearing down her counselors, and it wasn’t fair to the other campers in her cabin. Olivia wound up having a great summer. So did Jack. Haley did all right. Overnight camp isn’t for everyone.
But for some, it’s magic. A camper might think she’s only writing a cabin skit for the campfire round-up, but what I see is a girl who’s learned what it means to be inclusive, who’s found a way for everyone in a group to feel valued and is discovering the joy of becoming something bigger than herself. A camper might think he’s only singing an old camp song, but what I recognize is that, out of respect for a tradition and a place, he’s learned to suspend judgment and appreciate something that in any other setting might be considered corny. Perhaps what I love most about camp is that in the annual process of resurrecting this extraordinary community each summer, these 300 or so kids become better human beings.
So do the rest of us. Few leave these camps untouched by their enchantment. I have to say it’s different up there. I’m different up there. In this climate of leisure, whimsy, vigorous activity, and boundless affection, I became a better human being too—more generous, more patient, and more present. My heart swelled to twice its size between June and August. In camp, nobody needed to rush. I didn’t even rush myself—and that’s huge. So this summer, over several nights in my cabin at Forest Acres Camp for Girls, I wrote a poem about it. I called it “I Am a Different Person Here.” Here’s how it goes:
I am a different person here
I realized last night,
when I began to reminisce
about what felt so right.
Those summers I spent here in Maine
that gently took away my pain
and turned me into someone who
I hope I am returning to.
I find here I’m more generous,
have little to disguise,
I can’t remember when I’ve felt
such softness in my eyes.
I sometimes still cannot believe
that anyone would ever leave,
but coming back taught something dear—
it taught me that I’m different here.
I am a different person here
from someone I have known.
Instead of seeking shelter from
the world by going home,
I seek the comfort friendship brings,
find patience with the strangest things,
and think about who I could be
if I could bring this home with me.
– 2007
Janet Sasson Edgette
Janet Sasson Edgette, PsyD, is the author of Adolescent Therapy That Really Works, Stop Negotiating with Your Teen, and The Last Boys Picked: Helping Boys Who Don‘t Play Sports Survive Bullies and Boyhood.
