Stand on your own rock

“The map is not the territory.” – Alfred Korzbyski

This week we took our older daughter to summer camp where she will spend the next five and a half weeks rollicking in the woods, riding horses, swimming, hiking and climbing, making friendship bracelets, kayaking, and not writing home.

She went to the same camp last year, for three weeks that time, and came home changed in some ineffable way—was it the longer hair, the muscles from hiking, the freckles, the new love of salad greens? No, it was something much more than that, the kind of change that makes you cock your head to the side and wonder, but not really know.

Since she hadn’t gone to sleep-away camp before, I fretted about her last year, particularly because she acted so bizarrely when we got there—paralyzed like a doe in headlights, so recognizably freaked out that the counselor asked if we had any medications that we’d like to leave for her at Nurse Nancy’s station down by the lake.

“Come on,” I said to John after he hauled her 576-pound trunk to Bunk 8 in Timberline Cabin 2, “we just need to leave and let her get settled,” recognizing with a tiny little broken heart that she needed to make this transition on her own and that we were, in fact, the obstacle to her being her own true 12-year-old self. She felt watched, and, perhaps in some way judged, making her even more unsure, an awful tango of anxiety and quiet desperation. More importantly, we were a complete embarrassment to her, what with our shirts and pants and shoes and breathing and all.

“But she can’t be embarrassed of us,” John cried out in anguish as we made our sad exodus from the camp back into civilization. “I mean, I used to be embarrassed when my parents dropped me off at camp, but those were my parents.”

Poor, sweet, delusional John.

We are those parents, even if we’ve read all the Harry Potter books, know who the Teen Titans are, and can sing all the words to Spongebob’s theme song and ”Purple Haze.” ”Even castles made of sand, fall into the sea, eventually,” I reminded him quietly, channeling Jimi Hendrix in my hour of need.

I so feared for shy little Emma. Would she make any friends? Would she come out of her shell? Would she pass her swim test and remember to wear deodorant? Would she flunk cabin inspection? Would she lose her indestructible polycarbonate Nalgene personal hydration water bottle? Would she brush her teeth with any regularity?

She seemed so vulnerable, so fragile, so fearful that morning when we left her to join the other girls in microscopic Speedos for their swim test in the frigid lake. We were, for the first time in our lives, totally disconnected from her—no calls, no visits for the first two weeks. I could only rely on getting handwritten letters from her to know she was still alive; every afternoon I felt like a saloon girl in Archer City waiting for The Pony Express to bring news from Little Joe, a highly motivated Postal stalker, tracking the mail truck like a scout in the Wild, Wild West reading animal droppings for hire. Thank goodness the camp forced the girls to write a letter home once a week in order to get ice cream on Sunday nights (and by the word “letter,” I mean “sentence”) or I would still be tormenting the Postal Employee who frequents our front porch.

So, night after night I fretted, especially during that first week. Knowing that parents across the land were worrying (to be honest, unlike us they were actually probably taking advantage of the solitude by going out for dinner—including appetizers!—like real grown-up people and maybe even seeing movies that aren’t rated G or PG—what a concept!), the camp set up a section on their website where they periodically posted photos of the campers.

I emailed the password along to my mother, knowing she would enjoy seeing Emma at camp, too. The site was like crack cocaine, the two of us anxious twins with just the sweetest addiction problem, scouring the Web constantly with a magnifying glass (literally) for even the tiniest of glimpses of Emma, searching for proof that she was, in fact, still alive, having no other evidence of such. We talked ourselves into believing that tiny specks in the distance were Emma hiking, or that the face in shadows at the soulful camp bonfire was hers: “I see her! See Picture B-17, third page, fourth row? She looks too thin! She’s anorexic!” my mother would say. “That’s a small tree,” I’d reply.

It was the first clear photo of her that we saw on the site that has become an emblem for me of all that is right about finally becoming your own self, of standing tall, of reinventing yourself, of telling your own story about yourself, not the story that has always been told to you or of you. Fearful, shy, quiet Emma had come into her own in just a few days’ time. Having signed up for the very first 3-day hike that was offered, she conquered, she ruled, she shone from the inside out with a Self Light I’d never seen—and in my most honest moment, those moments that both enlighten and appall you, I realized that hers hadn’t shone like that because my own was too bright. And also because I was telling a different story of her: the shy, timid one. And because I was, in subtle and not so subtle ways, making her daily decisions for her—a habit, I guess, borne of birthing her. Here she is, making her own decisions for the first time, at the far left:

She is Queen of the Rock, Lord of All She Surveys, sure and solid, hands on hips looking squarely into the camera. I half expected to hear Helen Reddy belt out “I am woman, hear me roar” with Aretha Franklin singing backup when I saw this impassioned Declaration of Self R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

She was eager to go back and spend even more time there this summer, so I’ve spent the last week ironing miniscule name tags into her clothing, careful to place them in non-chafing positions because I, like the late Gilda Radner, adhere to the following fashion dictum: clothing must not itch.

There was mist on the lake there this year when we arrived with our two girls, one too small for camp yet, armed with a large trunk covered in bumper stickers declaring Emma’s love of horses, her fear of clowns and her vegetarianism, two stuffed manatees, a stuffed bunny, a 6.5” action figure named Aqualad who bothers me in some indescribable way, a purple sleeping bag, enough shampoo for a preteen platoon, stationery and stamps (hope springs eternal—maybe she can at least sell the stamps for contraband Snickers bars), retro t-shirts with witty sayings on them, and (don’t tell her Dad) several casually cool outfits for those Saturday nights when the BOYS from the camp across the lake quietly paddle their manly canoes across its placid surface, that no-man’s land, that symbolic and necessary barrier, to attend the “co-eds” (doesn’t the beauty of it just make you ache?) In fact, it is the haunting memories of boy-girl sweaty square dance socials (where “square dance” is replaced by “what-I-can’t-even-imagine” these days), those beautiful mosquito-riddled frozen instants in hormonal purgatory, that make me so very thankful that I’m in my mid-forties sleeping in a real bed with my brilliant and funny and good-smelling husband beside me.

That one photo of Emma on the rock taught me more than I can even say.

Most of the learning is still in the form of questions, really, even now, a year later: What story do we tell ourselves? What stories do we hear others tell about us, over and over and over again—until we start believing them?

What are the stories about ourselves that we don’t even tell ourselves, that we never tell others? What stories about ourselves have we so internalized that we can no longer tell the difference between the story and the truth? What stories raise expectations that we spend our lives trying to reach, when—in fact—they aren’t really our expectations or our story?

And, perhaps most importantly, what does it mean to be in the shadow of someone else’s story—or to put someone else there? How do we do that in subtle ways without realizing it?

Her picture reminded me of how much power there is in being responsible for one’s full self, one’s own story, stretched tall on that rock.

Emma changed last summer; I hope I did, but I’m not sure. I have to constantly be on guard not to mold her to my story of her, make her what I want her to be or believe her to be, let her stand on her own damn rock, not mine, play the tuba, not the flute. I have to stop describing her as shy when she isn’t, not anymore, no. I have to allow for the growth in her that I want in me. I have to get out of the way and let her get up on that rock.

“What did you eat at camp?” I asked when she begrudgingly returned home last summer, knowing of her pronounced food pickiness and a decided aversion to green vegetables (there was that long-lived and memorable phase of only eating white foods). “Oh, I really love, love, love Chef Mike’s salad!!” she fairly well screamed. 

Damn Chef Mike and his homemade buttermilk ranch dressing, I thought to myself, having once fought tooth and nail for Emma to eat a bean (yes, one bean). Or maybe food just tastes better when you’re living your life in the sun, hiking and climbing and kayaking all day. Yes, that must be it.

And now, a whole year gone, it’s time to get out the magnifying glass again to search for Emma. I’ll just look for rocks and I’m sure I’ll find her there.