Loss and Comfort

We've got a middle school at camp this week, which usually means more behavior problems and fewer issues with things like missing home and nocturnal incontinence. So far this week, the behavior problems seem confined to the male half of the species. There was also a boy who was having asthma problems but whose parents hadn't thought it necessary to send him to camp with his inhaler. When his parents were called and finally made it up to camp with his medicine, he got all weepy and wanted to go home with them. Later, his teacher told me that he'd recently lost his sister.

While the boy was waiting for his parents, a crying girl walked up to me outside the hub. It turned out that she'd recently lost her dad ("suddenly", her teacher later told me). We talked for a bit, and she told me that she had chosen the name "Willow" as her camp name for the week, which is, of course, my daughter's real name. I asked her why she had picked it, and she replied that she didn't really know. I told her what the name means to me, about how Willow trees are flexible and able to weather storms better than "stronger" trees like Oak. I think it helped. I also gave her a hug, which is something I don't usually do with campers, mostly because of our current reactionary social climate where any physical contact with kids, especially between adult males and little girls, is viewed with suspicion. It's a shame when people who need comfort don't get it because of the existence of people who prey on children. That's one of the hidden costs of the crime of pedophilia. Well-meaning adults are less likely to hug children without vague fears of being thought creepy for doing so. This girl really needed a hug though, but even so, I first asked her if it was okay for me to give her one. What a weird world we live in.

We got a tiny bit of rain late Sunday night and into Monday morning. Sometime after the rain had stopped, there was a small earthquake (2.9 on the Richter scale), which woke me up. Jeanine didn't even feel it. The clouds have been coming and going like a teasing promise, but the forecast continues to grimly call for a warming trend and obscene amounts of sun.

Finally, Pikas have been found to have some interesting dining habits when nobody is looking. So says the internet, at least (although, to be fair, the article is sourced from National Geographic).