Can VS Want

I’m not so naive as to think my most stressful day is behind me. I have seen enough of the unexpected to learn to expect the most and least out of an ordinary day. That being said, my first day as a camp nurse made my blood course with a force I have only felt during my most difficult shifts in the ICU. Over eighty campers flowing in with their medications and their long list of instructions on each particular preference and trigger. All of it personally packaged in too personal of a way. Zip-loc bags with loose pills, that once opened smelled of a mother’s perfume or cigarettes.

While the familiar feeling of urgency and responsibility settled on my one shoulder like faithful pet parrots, a new bird flew and landed on my other so lightly, so gently, that I nearly missed her in all her glory. She glowed green and warm, nuzzling my cheek with her beak. It would be unjust to try and name her.

This new, or perhaps forgotten, feeling welled up inside of me as the first set of campers arrived. A bus load of men and women with developmental disabilities kicked up the dust in front of the mess hall. My team and I ran out from the banana yellow room in the health center that had come to feel like a cozy prison cell. We finally had a camp full of campers. We joined the other staff members to make an archway out of our hands for the campers to pass through.

The rest of the day was chaos. It lasted a full 16 hours. We were passing meds while still receiving more. I felt responsibility peck at my ear. You can’t possibly do this.

It had only been a few days since the panic set in, and in that time I came to find that this little dry, dusty, mountain full of redwoods might as well be the Amazon. New species of perspectives and feelings fly at me with every smile I catch from the campers and staff.

Soothing thoughts, all blue and lovely. A parent on the other line gushing over their child’s inclination to help everyone around them. Suspicious thoughts, camouflaged by a sympathetic nod and a band-aid to humor the “injured”. Thoughts that glow orange when it feels like your words helped heal. Red thoughts all full of love and not anger when someone turns your opinion all the way around, making you realize that somewhere you read the signs wrong and made a wrong turn.

I realized that I have been asking people (or worse, assuming) if they can do things all of my life (myself included). I’m at a place where I don’t ask myself anymore, I just let myself try. But hiking during staff orientation made me realize that I haven’t been asking the people around me to try.

We walked up past the parking lot, the terrain turning from loose gravel, to sand, to smooth stone, and then dirt, surrounded by trees that smelled like they could catch on fire if the sun tried just a bit harder. It was steep, uneven, and fun. We made our way up and down to a rickety bridge next to a waterfall. All the while I was thinking “How are campers going to be able to do this?”

I caught myself more quickly than if I had stumbled on an upturned tree root. Where did that limiting thought come from? After these past few days I can tell that it won’t be my last. It is day five and our staff just found out a camper can get up from their wheel chair to have a cream applied. How ridiculous.

And how ridiculous it is that I have been so worried about self limiting behavior, when all along I have been limiting myself by thinking “can they?” I’ve started asking “will they?” or “do they want to?”. It seems so small, but it only leads to big things. In asking these questions, I have gained more love for the world, myself included.

It has made me think of the parents as well. I have thought of how many family members or friends may ask them,”how do you do it?”, because being a caregiver is a 24 hour job. The question may mean well, but the expected answer brings on a sort of pressure. Because the poetic thing to say would be “how can I not?” instead of what I have been feeling at times. My answer to having a temporary caregiver job is more like my answer to most math problems that go beyond simple addition and subtraction. I’m not sure how I got here, but I know I did it right. I have the correct answer. Also similar to the answer one would give after his/her 21st birthday party. I was 20 yesterday, and now I am 21 and happy I ended up home and alive.

I could be totally wrong. Maybe most parents would answer “how can I not?”. It makes sense. Yet, I think there is this source of pity that feels pitiful. Pity for the caregivers or for the campers. What a useless feeling. An inevitable one to boot, but still. There are campers that haven’t yet learned to enjoy food, refusing meals in the mess hall, then running outside to collect leaves and pinecones. With this comes this focus on how sad it is that these children or adults are missing something that others enjoy, when all the while they are out enjoying themselves.

It is this mentality that distracts from the value of a person. We are all guilty of this because compassion and empathy are tricky feelings. Pity feels so close to empathy. Close but no cigar. Feeling bad for people that aren’t necessarily suffering affects not only how we see them, it affects how they see themselves. And this applies not only to the differently abled, but everyone. I say this because we are all on the spectrum regarding our social and physical abilities.

I’m trying to learn to let myself have high expectations for myself and for others. Any friend of mine would say that I have high standards, but out of fear of disappointment, I let doubt flow in as if there were no dam. Having no dam is a lot different than not giving a damn. It seems like the bad thoughts flow all around me, while the good ones need to be dug up. The thing is, how can I experience the top if I am afraid of falling to the bottom?especially if that’s where all the good things are.

Throughout this summer, I have definitely found myself expecting less without realizing what I was doing. I didn’t have to catch myself, the campers caught me. One of my favorite campers, C. was basically nonverbal… or so I thought. I thought this throughout the first session she was at camp. I mistook her smiles for grimaces. Still, she was my favorite. Love is only made more evident when you can’t place what it is about a person that makes them so lovely.

C. came back for a second session and I was able to meet her mom. Never stingy with my feelings, I gushed over how excited we were to have her back at camp. Her mom and I spoke for a while when she revealed to me that C. was very, very, talkative at home. It just takes her a long time to feel comfortable enough at camp. Say what?

Sure enough, that week, C. said my name for the first time. She said hi to all of the nurses. She got in the pool and did what every camper does to me in the pool: splash me until I am afraid my contacts will pop out of my eyeballs and be lost forever. My personal favorite thing she said during that week was ” Cute!” when I showed her a video of my dog rolling around in the grass. I could see the sparkling yellow bits of pollen puff up as if Dexter, my dog, had just rolled around in front of us. All yellow and sparkling.

A new bird, for sure. The feeling of someone expanding your expectations for who they are or can be. I have hiked the same trail with campers that I originally hiked during orientation. They had no problem walking the rocky, dusty trails. We managed to take a million selfies, which led to a full on photo shoot directed by a camper. I have a full sd card to prove it.

I could ramble on and on about how my expectations have been exceeded and at times fallen short this summer. The amount of grace I have had to find for myself after losing my patience has left me feeling somewhat less than, cannot be measured. The little things help to remind me that I am not perfect, but still worthy of such a rewarding job. A mother called asking how her child’s agitation had been during a session. Of course, another one of my favorite campers, I told her how wonderful her daughter was at camp. She said that all she ever gets is negative feedback, so my words of praise were a pleasant surprise. And just like that, the green bird lands on my shoulder again.

The laughter and tears that this summer has brought to me have come in every shade and variety of which I can think. They all mesh together, proving that there is no container large enough to hold all of the things a human being can feel or be. We are a land unclaimed, with unlimited resources and unimaginable power.