Curing Homesickness – Follow Steps One Through Six
As classes pick up and my plate is filled with stress and responsibilities, I find myself reminiscing on happier days.
The sun is setting, the “Bazooka Bubble Gum” song is stuck in my head, and I’m covered in face paint, I have unbrushable lake hair and I’m exhausted. It’s all okay though, because I’m at camp.
One particular night puts my time at camp into perspective. As the kids are getting ready for bed, a camper finds me, concerned about his friend who is crying. I expect the typical homesick talk, which I secretly love for the satisfaction of having resolved it. I figure I’ve got the whole homesick situation down to a science, and in 20 minutes he’ll be sound asleep.
Step 1: Take him outside. Homesickness is contagious and we can’t have that around the other campers. I sit with him on the big rock overlooking the lake – a favorite spot of mine.
Step 2: Ask, “What’s wrong bud?” He tells me how he’s been missing his dad and his sister, and he wishes they were at camp with him.
Step 3: Distraction. I ask if he had fun today and what was his favorite part. He proceeds to tell me that he had an awesome day. He played Gaga ball, had a sandwich for lunch, and went to the super-cool middles’ fort. He tells me about the campfire, how funny and nice all the counselors are, and how thankful he is that his best friend told him about this camp.
Step 4: More distractions! We commence singing camp songs. Everyone loves a good camp song. It just so happens that his favorite is “Bazooka Bubble Gum”. I have a love/hate relationship with the bubble gum song. But, of course, I can’t resist and we sing it through. It turns out that he loves to sing and we start brainstorming an act for the talent show. (Side note: We ended up singing “Best Day of My Life” while his best friend breakdanced. In my opinion, it was one of the most epic talents to grace the stage that summer.)
Step 5: More distractions? At this point, I’m just enjoying talking to him. We end up bonding over the Blackfish documentary and how we love whales and would love to see them, but we don’t want them to be held in captivity because it’s not fair. Pretty wise for a nine-year-old, eh? He also does a fantastic penguin imitation.
Step 6: Bring it back in. I give it the old, “Don’t you think your family is going to be so proud of you for having a great time at camp and excited to hear all about it at the end of the week?” He agrees, but goes on to say how he is just a worrier. He worries at school a lot and sometimes gets teased. When he is super upset, he sometimes goes into the bathroom to cry. He says he finds himself crying in the shower sometimes too, but it’s okay because his dad says it’s okay to cry.
I try to relate, telling him that I am a worrier myself. I tend to overthink and allow my worrying get the best of me. His response befuddles me. He insists that he knows a way to help. He says, “You just have to think of a happy place where nothing can go wrong and pretend you’re there.” He asks what my happy place would be and I tell him it’s Camp AJ. He asks if, at some point, he can borrow my happy place because it seems like a good one – and of course I agree to this. He then tells me that his happy place is the field of flowers he had seen in a Wendy’s commercial. He imagines himself curled up in a ball in the middle of the field of yellow flowers, where nothing bad could happen. He then recommends I try out his happy place, to which, of course, I agree as well.
At this point, my scientific steps of putting a homesick child back to bed have flown out the window. My intentions of making him feel better have turned into wise advice for me, from a nine-year-old. Okay, so I didn’t take the whole Wendy’s commercial idea quite so literally, but its simplicity blew my mind. Now, when life’s worries are getting the best of me, I do think back to that field of flowers. Not because it is a happy place for me per se, but because it reminds me of the innocence of youth and the ability of children to simply remain happy in a world of chaos. Our perspectives on life can often get so clouded by the bad that it might seem ridiculous to look to an imaginary field of flowers for some calm and happiness.
In the end, maybe that’s exactly what we need. From a child’s point of view, there is happiness and magic in the world. From a child’s point of view, a camp scavenger hunt isn’t simply a counselor dressed in a goofy costume giving out plastic coins – it’s a search in the woods for pirates with golden treasure. A talent show isn’t being stuck in a room for 3 hours listening to the same song as it’s sung repeatedly, but a chance to do what they love and to watch their friends get up and do what they love. This is part of what makes Camp AJ my happy place. It’s a place where we can attempt to forget the bad and focus on what makes us happy – be it diving into the lake or cheering loudly to show who has the most spirit.
Long story short, the homesick camper went to bed and had a fabulous week at camp, eventually conquering his fear of jumping into the pool and even supporting a friend to do the same. On his last day, he came to me with a revelation. He said, “Ya know, Tayler, I think that rock we were sitting on is a miracle rock. After we had that talk, I stopped worrying about everything and just had fun”.
And I thought to myself…isn’t that what camp is all about?
Tayler is a student at the University of Delaware and has served as a camp counselor at Camp AJ for the 2014 and 2015 summers. She wanted to share her this reflection on her experiences at camp. Opinions expressed in volunteer blogs are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of CAP or the Volunteer Program.
