Volunteering.

I have no cabin this week--I'm not technically on staff--and it's been a blur of velvet water and morning yoga, big hugs and secret missions and smiles and fireflies in the trees. There has been love and new understanding, and (unfortunately, though perhaps unavoidably) anger between campers, between staff, and between staff and campers. I hate this. I suppose I am blessed in my ability to hold my temper longer than most, but what I feel is disappointment and frustration with my friends and coworkers. (I love them wildly still, but, I suppose, no longer beyond all reason.) Maybe I should be more sympathetic with the need to vent and process, but there is such a fine line between venting and meanness, I feel. And for me, conversations of that kind feel like a tar baby. It all seems so harmless at first, and then I find myself stuck further and further in the mire. I want to make it better, but so often I end up enabling or even participating instead.

On the plus side, regarding campers (present and former and future), God, I love some of them so much. I love them all, but some really have holds on my heart. As I said, the CiTs can get me every time. And one that I've known for five years gave me this lecture, though (for this repetition, at least) he delivered it to JP:
"JP, if you had a favorite counselor, one who had always been there for you, who had always been there to meet you at the bus on the first day, and who had been there every time to say goodbye to you at the end of the session, but this year they weren't there at the beginning and then you found out that they were leaving early, how would you feel?"
He has always been an excellent camper, comes from an excellent family, and has been a wonderful CiT. I so hope to work with him next year. And I hope he isn't too upset.

Our only junior counselor this session, who honestly does not seem like a junior counselor at all, has given me a very similar hard time, which makes me feel quite guilty and sad (more so than I already did), but which also makes me feel so loved.

In any case: hugs and secret missions, cicadas and fireflies and warm velvet water in the early morning. It is heaven here in these woods.