post card from the edge, vol. 5

it's 9:40pm, tony bennett is on the cd player. if i had a glass of scotch in my hand, fresh from a bath, i'd never know i was at camp. i know that i will desperately miss this place when i am gone. i'm kind of ready for that feeling, right now. it's wednesday. this camp session isn't over until sunday at 10am (hint, hint for those of you who need some church and some face time with me), and i am just tired. today, i really felt tired, for the first time this whole summer. tired in my bones, like if i had to manage one more crisis, band-aid one more bruised ego, faciliate one more staff meeting, dry one more homesick tear, do one more load of sandy, wet clothing, i might just fall to pieces. that is not a luxury in which i am capable of indulging. so, i'm relishing every moment of this early evening, enjoying what has just become a nat king cole track (i got a classic ballads cd on my last break...), and thinking about folding clean laundry, so i can sleep on my bed tonight.

everything really is alright. this is not an s.o.s. this is just me being honest. i adore camp. this summer has made me remember more things that i can begin to list, learn more things than i imagined, and forced me to ask hard questions, the likes of which i am often breathless simply contemplating, much less actually confronting. i knew that this summer would do one of two things--it would either answer some questions or drag up new ones. i can honestly say that i have exactly two answers to questions i had at the beginning of the summer. and i can honestly tell you that i have about a million more questions than i did when i got here. and that's pretty amazing.

jim valvano was a coach for villanova when they won their first ncaa basketball championship. it was a cinderella story to end all cinderella stories. he was a hero of mine for a long, long time. before he died, he was on the espy awards, and talked about what it meant to live every day. he said that to really live every day, you had to laughed, cry, and think. i have lived more days out here this summer than i have in the past year. that one fact makes all the ego juggling, immaturity, maddening schedules, fussy parents, non-compliant teenagers, humidity, ant infestations, pool vacuums and rules, being rolled in the volleyball sand, eating the same meals week after week, getting grass in my hair, etc. absolutlely and totally 100% worth it. this is life, this is my day to day. whatever happens after august 14th, i will be grateful for this time in my life, come what may. i will never get this time back, and God helping me, i am trying to live, really live, every day, at camp or not. this is too amazing to allow it to stop when i go home and find out what life is outside of this place, again. i'm a little afraid, a little excited, but mostly just content to see what comes next, whenever it pokes it's head around the corner.

mil besos--rmg