Interesting,

How I turn to a sniveling mess at the end of every session where I've known any of the kids for a while. Or where I know the older siblings of any of the kids. Or where any of the kids I know have turned into staff that I love beyond all reason. I start out beaming at them and then I ask silly, sappy questions, and then I take a bunch of pictures so I can beam at my convenience later, and then I just double over on the last night at some point during campfire and start leaking out the face.

Last session it was Robert's fault. Robert's and RJ's and Dominique's and Canaan's, and Jon's and pretty much every other kid that was up for CiT that I've known forever.
This session, I mean, I've been beaming all over the place, beaming so much that our power bill has been pretty much halved since I got here, but tonight it started with Sean Michael. I mean he started coming as a little boy--this tiny, hyper little nine-year-old, bouncing off the walls everywhere with questions and ideas and science projects all over the place, and he's grown up so much, and he's had to handle so much in his life, and now here he is, nearly grown. There he was tonight at campfire, playing the guitar he started learning here last year as one of my CiTs. It struck me that there's always just enough, you know? Gracie used to play the ukelele and Rob the guitar, and then Art played after Rob couldn't come so much anymore and Gracie had gone. Now Sean is learning. And now Sean is sitting around the campfire with an adoring, insane little boy leaned up against his shoulder, pointing out the North Star to a kid that didn't know Venus was a planet. And now Sean's little brother Jamie is here, and I can see it happening all over again. He is so insane, really all over the place and filled just like his brother with stories and crazy ideas and questions about animals, and I just love him so much. And I just doubled over and started crying right there with all the little boys and all my former little boys singing and making obnoxious, badly-timed jokes all around me. I do it almost every time.