Oh, My Heart

(Edited from my previous entry....I had to take out some of the information. If you really want to know about it, email me)

Oh goodness- what can I say about this week at Camp Hobe? It was wonderful, trying, uplifting, mildly depressing and yet incredibly hopeful. I laughed, cried, flirted, ate, slept (sort of) and came away a much, much, much better person than when I got there.

Let's start with Sunday- I met up with my cousin Crystal (also volunteering) and another counselor and we all rode down together. Sunday was spent training with the other counselors and getting to know the camp and what was going to happen during the week. Good times were had.

Monday- the kids arrived! My cabin was a super great group of 9 year old girls. Some of them have had cancer, others were siblings of kids with cancer. It was pretty easy to tell right off the different backgrounds the kids came from- who has more structure at home, whose mom and dad do everything for them, stuff like that. But, they were all great.

The majority of the week was spent playing, swimming, doing arts and crafts, learning about nature, drama, music, all good things. Oh, and as a side note- within a very short amount of time of the kids arriving at camp, the sign at the arts & crafts cabin was changed to read farts & craps.

I learned some great new songs- Baby Shark, Bubble Gum, Milk, Johnny Rebeck, Tarzan and a bunch of others. If you need songs for camp, let me know and I can pass them on. They are super fun to sing- the kinds of songs that get stuck in your head for ever and ever.

I cannot say enough good things, but here are some of the highlights:
-Having the girls come up with the cabin name (Hawaiian Swimming Potatoes)
-Laughing until my sides hurt talking to the girls in our cabin on the last night
-Standing on a chair in the cafeteria/lodge shaking my booty while singing a variety of songs
-Plaing MASH while we were in the cabin for 2.5 hours because it was raining so hard (just for the record, I will be living in a house in Canada with my 3 children and be a stay at home mom and my husband is a man who in this blog will be referred to as Henri)
-Having to spell things out with my rear end
-Seeing how excited the kids got over pranks played on them and watching them plan their revenge
-Watching children who were there for the first time come out of their shells
-Being with the most resiliant group of kids on the earth
-Making new friends
-Watching small children with adult sized problems have the chance to just be kids
-Watching little girls get embarrassed and giggle when handsome boys speak French to them
-Having a little child trust and love you in an instant
-Helping a little boy plant a flower in a memorial garden so he could remember someone
-Feeling eternally grateful for the good people there are in this world
-Regaining a firm belief in the power of a smile and of an arm around the shoulder
-Being a part of something so incredible and so much bigger than myself


Granted, there were a few things that were not so fun, but those mostly involved having to be a little mean to motivate the kids to get ready to go and bodily fluids and middle of the night trips running to the bathroom.

The biggest highlight for me happened probably on Wednesday late morning. Every year, there is a program at camp called Hobe Forever. It is a time for the kids and volunteers to plant flowers in memory of someone or something in a little memorial garden that is on the edge of camp. If the kids don't want to go, they are given free time to play. Counselors don't have to stick with their kids during this time. Since it was my first summer at camp, everyone really encouraged me to go see the program.

It was a really neat experience- I shed more than a few tears. After it was over, as people were starting to dissapate, I turned to a little boy that was standing next to me (I think his name was Ian) and asked him if he wanted to walk back to the main part of camp with me. He whispered really quietly "No, I think I want to plant a flower." I asked him if he wanted me to help him and he said yes, so really quietly, we found a spot and picked and planted a flower. He took such good care to make sure that the dirt was around the flower and patted down just right. Then we walked back to camp together. It was one of those things that just stays in your heart.

Now, I know this has been a long post and there are no pictures, for which I apologize. I was too busy having fun and doing other things to take more than a couple. But, there are a few people who have pictues I want them to send to me, so I will post those when I get them.

I would go to camp again in a heartbeat. I'm hoping that life is such next year that I can go- it was exactly what my heart needed. I loved, loved, loved it!