In My Hands

Despair is tedious. Any step outside of it has to be easier than the effort involved in staying bitter.

After a long stomp in the cool shade of the forest, I shook off my shellack and started flexing my creative powers. I tracked down the only woman working at camp with a toddler, and asked her to come by on Saturday for a playdate. She and her daughter showed up ready to romp. The two little ones threw rocks in the creek, chased each other around the bouldering wall, and rode trikes fresh from winter storage over the center green. The two moms pried and revealed, a little at a time. Not all pals become friends, but some do.

Then I turned my sights on the diaper dilemma. My neighbors listened patiently to my rambling request about using the shared washer for laundering Eliot's pre-folds.

Over the past few years, I've learned camp draws many kinds of folks. The vets who hunt and fish on their days off. The executive leadership devotees driven by the latest organizational craze. The environmentalists who take on composting dining hall scraps. The teambuilders. The teachers. The former campers for whom camp is a terrible professional fit but have no idea what else to do. The sports enthusiasts, mountain men, hikers, water junkies, jugglers, and equestrians who love their thing enough to do it and teach it and live it summer after summer for measly pay and cramped housing.

But I am also coming to understand that for all their differences, most camp people share some basic commonalities. One of these is an underlying conservative approach to their relationship with the land. Living simply, walking lightly, consuming only as much as necessary.
So, when I proposed washing messy diapers in their machine, my neighbors were more concerned about my occasional capful of bleach than poop in the Maytag. Eliot's tush has been happily padded in cotton for the past three days.

As for the preschool moms and their not-so-subtle dismissal? How nice it would be to harumph away, "Who wants them for friends, anyway?" Because, well, I do.

It's all new-girl karma, I'm sure. I cannot know how many times I have mindlessly turned my back on the new chick at the party or in the fitness class while I was busy chattering away with my already-friends. How often does any of us think, "Hmm, I wonder if there is some new fabulous person in my town looking to connect? Maybe I'll go track her down!"

I have to take this fate into my own hands. So, with my hands, I crafted little "happy spring" packages for each kid in Eliot's class. Into the hand-decorated envelope went seed-packets of sunflowers, organic fruit leather, stickers, and an brazen yellow notecard with our family's name and number. Maybe no one will get an urge to call. Maybe some kids will just enjoy their stickers from Eliot. But if anyone does notice just a hint of my fabulous-ness, they have my number.