Going Back to Summer Camp at The Clearing

The passing of Memorial Day means that summer is officially here.  And if the 50 degree weather continues to give us doubt that the season is upon us, my husband and I just take a look at the top of our refrigerator at the toppling tower of booklets and brochures we started receiving from area summer camps back in February.

Like most parents around these parts, the anticipation of summer comes with enduring questions of what camps and activities to enroll our children in. 

We have NEVER spent a single thought on where we, as parents, should go to camp. 

That is, until now.

For Christmas last year, I received a wonderful gift from my family: the promise of a week-long writing retreat.  At first I thought about just renting a cabin somewhere and writing in a state of solitude, but decided rather quickly that I wanted to find a program involving some form of critique, a program that would afford me time to both write in solitude and to share in a critically involved community of writers.

I found it in my own backyard.

The Clearing was founded in Ellison Bay (just north of us, on the north end of Wisconsin’s Door County penninsula)  by Jens Jensen, a  landscape architect who designed many of the public gardens in northern Illinois.  Jensen first imagined his school as a place that would provide adults with diverse educational experiences in the folk and artisan traditions.  Today, sixty years after his death, it continues to draw returning friends (aka groupies, or, ahem, campers,) back again and again from year to year for classes as diverse as woodturning, caning, and birdwatching, watercolor painting, carving and writing.

Take the less travelled footpath. . .

Upon my arrival on the 21st of May, I discovered the campus to be a woodland treasure overlooking the shores of Ellison Bay.  As I followed the fieldstone path past several log cabins toward the main lodge, the trillium winked and nodded in the underbrush beneath the cedars and maples, alongside blossoms of yellow I would later discover were wild orchids, and among countless fairy rings of forget-me-nots. 

I was enchanted . . . and I hadn’t even checked in.

The Schoolhouse's Main Studio

I was one of the few newbies on campus, and spent much of the week just trying to analyze what it was about the place I loved the most.  Was it the spontaneous accordion concerts given by fellow participant Will out in front of Mertha’s Cabin in the evenings?  Was it the wonderful camaraderie that evolved among the watercolorists, poets and wood turners, or perhaps the critical investment of the professional artists who were guiding us in the development of our projects? The balance between focused dialogue and silence . . . or the insanely indulgent home cooked meals we were served at the lodge?

By the end of the week, I delighted to discover that it was the balance that The Clearing offered — between space for creation and restoration, silence and conversation, camaraderie and solitude—that will bring me back. 

Talking with poet Robin Chapman as
Will plays his accordian
(Thanks to Carolyn for this pic!)

I developed a chapbook last week, and short of that, wrote more than I have in some time . . . although you wouldn’t know it for the two poems that were actually completed.  One may just be the missing poem in a short collection of poems I developed years ago.  . . . and the other, while being an occasional poem with many references you just won’t get unless you were there, pretty much sums up my thoughts on why every adult should go back to camp:

Letter from Camp

Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh. . .

There are benefits in coming back to camp as an adult —

There’s less chance of contracting poison ivy from the kid wanting to impress the cute nurse’s aid now . . .  but boy, you should see the septugenarians swoon when Sweet-Granola-Erik or Peter-the-Morning-Eye-Candy are around.

Food fights and sunburns have been kept to a minimum as we’ve become ettiquitted, and less secure.

. . . you never know where it might lead you.

. . . And the ratio of homesick campers calling home has dropped exponentially.

This time, our leaders trust us enough to let us hike without a partner!  And craft time involves POWERTOOLS.

. . . And yet, as the gossiping that used to emanate from our cabin well past midnight has turned into a swell of snoring shortly after lights out at ten, I am practicing the maxims you packed me off with in my youth.

                “Talk to that quiet camper in your cabin. . . you may just discover she’s travelled seven continents.”

                “Make friends with the guy with the Swiss Army knife . . . you never know when you’ll need a corkscrew.”

                “Try new things, and never offer a disclaimer.”

A Poets Gathering.

Yes, yes, I’m eating enough.  And drinking. In fact, this camp seems to breed full bladders.  I’m pretty sure it isn’t wild beasts roaming around at night!

I have to say in the end, though, you were wrong about one thing Mom and Dad.  What happens at The Clearing doesn’t stay at The Clearing. . . but carries us the whole year through.

Children’s Book Week, 2011

This year marked Songbird’s first foray into Children’s Book Week . . . and I was delighted to participate in the celebrations!  On Tuesday May 2^nd  I spent the morning with the wonderful students St. Mary’s Visitation, a local school that adopted Kwaku for its library several months ago. [1]

Children’s Book Week was founded in 1919, at the urging of Franklin K. Mathiews, who was then serving as the Librarian of the Boy Scouts of America. The week, which has been celebrated in school and public libraries across the nation ever since, was introduced to focus attention on the need for quality children's books and the importance of childhood literacy.

Nearly a century later, Book Week continues to be celebrated in the interest of developing social awareness about literacy. . . but has adopted an additional mission: to create life long readers. 

This was my second visit to SMV, and I was pleased to return to conduct presentations with all of the elementary school classes.

First, the kindergarteners helped me conduct a performative reading of the book.  The students designated as wiley Lions ROARED when he made his appearance. . . the students designated as Lizards stuck out their tongues to catch flies when it was their turn. . . and the  brave little spiders shuffled their hands and feet softly when I gave them their cue.   

After the reading, we talked about the hows and whys of bulling.

“If you or a friend were being bullied, would you ever tie the bully up?” I asked them.

“NO!” they said in unison.

“What might you do?”

"Tell a teacher!"  "Tell the bully to walk away!"

Let me tell you, these kids knew their stuff!  They could identify each of the various forms bullying takes, and what bystanders should do when they see it occurring. 

Toward the end of our conversation, one little girl with long, curly auburn hair raised her hand from the back row.  “It makes me sad,” she admitted.  “It’s a sad story, because the animals all walk away from the Lion at the end.  They are actually bullying him too. “

With the older grades, I spent
time discussing the meaning
of Kente cloth symbols. 

“That’s absolutely right,” I said.  “When we purposely leave someone out when we're playing, or ignore them, that’s a form of bullying too, isn't it?”

“YES!” they all said, nodding vigorously. 

“Members of a community have to take care of one another, whether that community is their classroom, their family, or their town.  And doing that takes patience and attention, conversation and love.  It’s a lot of work!”

 After 35 minutes, our time together was up, and they filed out of the room behind their teacher, each saying in turn, “Thank you, Mrs. Moo-too-pon-dee-ann.”  They wore the fantastic smiles of early childhood . . . grins expressing an unabridged, unrestrained enthusiasm. 

“You’re welcome!” I replied, smiling back.  

As the sensitive little girl filed past, she smiled shyly at me and said in her soft voice, “That’s the best story I’ve ever heard.”

“I am so very glad we were able to share it together,” I replied.

And I so very much was.  

Throughout the rest of the morning, I worked with the older students in decoding the symbols in Ashanti kente cloth, and discussing the way in which a community creates a book.  Each class was dynamic, eager, and a great deal of fun to work with.  . . . and although I had all but lost my voice by the end of the morning's conversations, I felt wholly energized. 

If there is something more thrilling than having had the opportunity to work with children at the beginning of their journey into their lives as readers, I haven't found it.  I am so thankful that this year both the students of SMV and Children's Book Week itself gave me another opportunity to live my enthusiasm OUTLOUD.  

    

---

[1] This post comes extraordinarily late . . . but  better late than never.   Who would think one has so little time when one is officially on Summer Break from teaching?!?

Motherhood, and other Self-Mollifying Enterprises

Less than two weeks after Miss S. was born I started the second year of course work for my Ph.D.  That first semester of motherhood was an almost psychedelic experience.  My fatigue was so entrenched,  I soon found myself in a sort of liminal state of consciousness between the worlds of the books I had been reading for my coursework and the world I inhabited.  One night I might have Moby Dick’s Ahab talking to me in my sleep . . . the next day I’d cross the campus mall imagining I was entering Vanity Fair, or one of the waking dead crossing London Bridge in Eliot’s The Waste Land.  In classes I would reach into my portfolio bag and a tiny diaper would pop out, folded over the crisp white pages of the legal pad I was pulling out . . . or the voluptuous squeak of a rattle sounded as things shifted on the bag's bottom.

Moreover, within a week of leaving the hospital, it was clear I could have become the poster mom for La Leche League.  I had never before realized how much the murmur of chalk drawn across a chalkboard could sound like a newborn’s mewling . . . until my milk began to drop spontaneously in some existential response to the universe’s demands that it be fed. . . in every class I attended. 

“How’s it going Megs?,” my Uncle Chris asked when he called one morning. 

“Well,” I said, glancing up at the projectile spit-up the baby had just expelled over one foot onto a nearby wall.  “I have a call out to our pediatrician regarding the scene out of The Exorcist I just witnessed . . . and my breasts have become semi-automatic weapons.”

There was a sort of guffaw on the other end of the phone as he gagged on his own laughter . . . or perhaps his throat closed out of shock.  “Wow.  That was probably too much information.” 

I laughed off-handedly, completely unabashed.  “You asked.”  

There was no keeping up appearances, and I wasn’t the least bit bothered, strangely enough.  This shy Midwestern girl was engaged with wonder as my body pursued its own creative revolt.  I became curious at the image of myself in the mirror, at how shiny my hair and skin had become.  I marveled at how the new post-baby bump made me look, in my own mind, just like Botticelli’s Venus.  I was fascinated by the way the padding on my hips and arms made natural cradles for my baby. . . and how I finally filled out the seat of my pants after a lifetime of not having hips.

And most of all, I was amazed at how my semi-automatic weapons just kept firing away.

“How’s the little Tsunami?” Wendy asked one morning when I came into our office at Marquette.  Miss S., by then, was five months old.  Wendy had accidently mispronounced her name when she had first heard it nearly a year before . . . "Tsunami" was revived among all three of my office mates when, after my baby's birth, I habitually looked like something stirred up from the ocean bed in a tempest.   

“She’s wonderful.  Well fed,” I remarked, smiling.   “How are you, sweetie?”

“I am doing well!” she replied, picking up a gift bag off her dresser.  “And I feel badly that it has taken me this long to get this to gift to you, but you'll see why I wanted to give it to you after she was born . . .”

I opened it, and saw a book.  Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year. 

“Thank you!” I replied, pulling out the book. I had not read anything of Lamott’s, but knew that Wendy was a huge fan of her writing.  It meant a great deal to me that she wanted to share one of her favorite authors.     

“I get this book for all my friends who have children,” Wendy explained.  “But I am warning you . . . practice your kegels while you read . . . or you run the risk of peeing in your pants.”

She wasn’t kidding.  When I got home, I relaxed the binding and more or less let the book open to wherever it wanted to . . . to communicate its wisdom on its own terms.  It opened to the November 1^st entry:

“. . .  today I’m a glorious Florentine fountain of milk, standing like a birdbath in the garden with milk spouting forth from every orifice,” is the first line my eyes rested on.  Surely a more sylvan image than my own artillery metaphor to describe my new endowments, but it drew me in.  Someone else thought the volume of milk they produced that day was newsworthy!

“I’m learning to call people all the time and ask for help,” she adds, “which is about the hardest thing I can think of doing.  I’m always suggesting that other people do it, but it is really is awful at first.  I tell my writing students to get into the habit of calling one another, because writing is such a lonely, scary business, and if you’re not careful you can trip off into this Edgar Allan Poe feeling of otherness.  It turns out that motherhood is much the same. . .” (97)

I read Operating Instructions with the exuberance one has when they’ve just met someone with whom they’ve clicked. . . eagerly, zealously, with such enthusiasm my husband would find me laughing out loud as I read, and speaking out loud in loud affirmations as I carried on a phantom dialogue with the text.   

Had Wendy not given me that truthful book of a mother’s first year of her son’s life, I would have most likely faced my own first year of motherhood in the same self-deprecating way as was, and is my nature . . . marveling silently at the inglorious and awkward forces that had taken over my body and life.  Yet, my journey through my daughter’s first year would have perhaps been a slightly more lonely, slightly more scary business.   


... At the very least, it would have been less affirming, for as the first time Lamott opened her crisp new journal, she began inscribing bits of a life that, years later, I could recognize as my own.