#43 - On Bruised Magic and Bad Renovations

Or Everything I know, I learned at Camp

Today I turn 38. Yesterday I had to plunge the shower in our bathroom because every renovation done in the house feels like maybe it was done at 50%. This is a privileged problem to have. This is not the point of this post. The point of this post is that when I took the  plunger to the shower, my husband (!!) looked at me and asked how the hell I thought to take a plunger to the shower, and then in unison we said “Camp.” 

One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is how cool it is that as humans, we can carry so much with us at once. That all the things we’ve learned or absorbed or observed or felt just kind of stay with us. And that they don’t just stay with us in a silo, but that they build upon one another, that our minds, our bodies and our souls are constantly changing because of every single thing we take in. It’s incredible to me that we can think we’ve found answers and lose them, just to find new more pertinent answers or even better, new, more pertinent questions. 

I spoke to a woman recently who told me that we should never let our context disrupt our own personal magic. When I listen to “Ripple” by The Grateful Dead, I think about how context always pushes our magic around but, she’s right, should never displace it. And we have to do what we can as individuals to protect this magic at all costs. 

Because my magic feels bruised a bit lately and because I’m doing everything I can to celebrate what’s to come as opposed to mourning what’s past, I thought I might celebrate the place that I see these two things coming together most often. Camp. A lifetime away, but never too far, I first found myself at Maine Teen Camp at 13 and though I left a long time ago, it’s a part of my DNA that will never leave me. It’s a piece of my past that constantly drives my future. I am and will always be a “camp” person, but it’s not just that. It’s that nearly everything important I learned the foundation of at camp. It’s the space this piece of myself gives me to try and to fail, to love hard and often, and to know when exactly to pull out the plunger. 

And so on my 38th birthday (RIP mid thirties), I leave you with this: 

38 things I learned at camp. 

1. How to plunge a toilet  / a plunger basically can fix anything. 

2. How to make friends, real friends

3. How to read a map 

4. How to break a commercial dishwasher 

5. How to navigate a steep, gravely path 

6. How to co-exist with spiders

7. How to choreograph a skit in less than an hour

8. How to work AV equipment

9. How to throw a fabulous party with a few sheets and a playlist

10. How a wig can change an entire mood 

11. How to win over angsty teenagers with the promise of ice cream

12. How to fall asleep anywhere. 

13. How to love something even if you are terrible at it (tennis, I’m looking at you) 

14. How to outsmart a bat 

15. How to appreciate an icy plunge first thing in the morning 

16. How every human has a magical power and sometimes it takes pulling them out of their comfort zone to recognize it. 

17. How to use a woodchipper. 

18. How powerful play is 

19. How to hold the beauty of the natural world

20. How to play the bass (just one song, but there’s a photo, so it counts)

21. How to fake it til you feel it 

22. How to appreciate the power of wet clay 

23. How there’s nothing that a staple gun and a bottle of acrylic paint can’t solve

24. How to mulch

25. How to annunciate without losing your voice 

26. How to dance like no one is watching

27. How to build the meaning

28. How to throw a frisbee

29. How to manage a team of 60 

30. How to handle clashing personalities

31. How to think WAY outside of the box, because the box is not usually an option

32. How to meet, to love, to know, to part in the course of 9 weeks. 

33. How to be silly

34. How to be discreet

35. How to trust that heartache always resolves itself

36. How to reframe flaws to assets

37. How to tame and trust a fire

38. How to be loved. 

Chic Schmaltz La Vie, 

LCF