The Goodbye Girl

Last year, my summer at Appel Farm passed by so slowly I could count the hours. This year, it was a zip line I flew down in a delirious rush. Nine weeks may as well have been nine days. It felt as if I arrived at camp one day, pale-skinned and buzzing with anticipation, only to leave the next day with a tan and the weary look of an old woman who has been living in a bunk surrounded by 16-year olds for the last nine weeks.

How another summer has so quickly come and gone is beyond me. As I type this from the seat of a plane soaring over the dirty landscape of New Mexico, I feel slightly bemused by the thought that camp is over. Nine weeks of classes and counselling and telling the campers not to squirt ketchup straight into their mouths is over. It feels like it was just a figment of my imagination which, for one beautiful moment, became something tangible. Then it disappeared like all figments do, back into the abyss.  And I carry on forward.

It would be lovely to fool myself into believing I will be back at the farm next year, but I know it wouldn't be true. I have sucked the place dry of everything it had to offer me and I have offered it two very willing summers of my life in return. I've come to realise that I'm ready for new adventures, which means no more escaping back to the USA each June. As I drove away in the rain on Sunday, I turned around and took one last look at the place where this whole rollercoaster first started in 2010. I remember that day now like a bunch of images flashing from an old film roll– catching the yellow school bus from New York, pulling into the Appel Farm parking lot, the first time I stepped into the bunk, the first time I even spoke to the people whose arms I cried into when I left.

Had anyone told me this is how it would all turn out two years after first deciding to apply for a summer camp, I never would have believed them.  That I would have a great time, yes. But that I would be so in love with Elmer, New Jersey that I would return for another year? That I would find a crazy kind of salvation? That having to say goodbye to those friends is like no heartbreak I’ve ever known? I don’t think that hopeful yet naive version of myself would have believed that.

There was much that happened between leaving Appel Farm on Sunday and boarding my plane to San Diego this morning, but the only part of it that I can remember is crying. And when I wasn’t crying, I was blinking back tears through bloodshot eyes and sniffling like a crack addict. The last 24 hours has just been one big blur of ‘lasts’. I looked into my best friends’ faces for the last time and I cried into their collar bones as we held each other for the last time. And in the glow of the Philadelphia lights, I had to ignore the unspoken fear that maybe these are summer flings, just like any other. Maybe our love will suffer in the lonvegity. Maybe we will become lazy with writing emails or making dates to call each other despite the time difference. Maybe the overwhelming sense of friendship which consumes me now will be reduced just to photos and anecdotes shared at the family dinner table. As untrue as I know that will be, the thought of it makes me want to vomit.

But as my eyes well up all over again, I feel no relief in the unsatisfying consolation that my friendships with these beautiful people are not in fact ending. Being best friends but in different countries is not enough. iPhone apps and email and Skype don’t create the same memoires. Seeing someone’s face on a computer screen is not the same as walking to the coffee shop with them. A letter in the mail is not the same as a conversation in person. The friends I left in Australia would vouch for this, which makes me the constant in this equation. I am the foolish masochist who continues to knowingly put oceans between herself and the people she loves.

And I know that I should be grateful that we found each other at all – kindred spirits are not easily stumbled across. But I can’t be a member of the Pollyanna Club on this one. I am handing back my badge and just being plain old down in the dumps.  

Think I’ll go cry some more now.

Ciao for now. xo

All's Well That Ends Well

We sang, we cried and during the scariest electrical storm I've ever seen, we said goodbye to our second session campers and to the end of Appel Farm 2011.

Staff Week seems like an age ago and yet camp has gone by so fast this year. It feels like just yesterday that Molly and I were driving across the country to get here, talking about and anticipating the coming summer. Now it is over. The children have gone home and the only proof I have that this summer ever existed are a collection of ceramic mugs I threw on the wheel and the momentos I've horded from the beginning of the summer, not to mention the beginning of my travels.

But those momentos - poetry I've written, letters given to me, cards and notes passed between friends, costume pieces from camp dances, worthless gifts from my campers that would mean nothing to anybody else, but have become more important than any of the things I've bought for myself in the last year. I have carried a binder full of this - stuff - for 12 months and as I crammed even more into it yesterday, I was reminded of the full length of my travels. I really have been gone for a long time.

Technically, camp is not over yet. The staff remain here for two more days - to clean and inevitably, party - but the 'camp' part that makes it camp has finished. Yesterday, as I hugged my last eight girls goodbye - Candace, Angela, Leah, Sarah, Jen, Ace, and Haley and Katie who have been in my bunk for eight weeks - I could only hope that I had left them with a few nuggets of truth and a sense of self-worth that they will remember about me and this summer for the rest of their lives. It's almost ridiculous how much you fall in love with these kids. It's only after two months of getting frustrated with them not cleaning up after themselves and aggravated that they never listen or angry that they want to be treated like adults but are acting like children, that you realise how much you love them and have come to consider them your own children.

Ciao for now. xo

Camp Conclusion

After three years of waiting, two failed applications attempts, one year of employment struggle, a very long plane flight and nine glorious weeks with the most talented American kids and artists I've ever met, my camp experience has officially met its end. And it was all worth it.

On the 20th August, I waved goodbye to my second session campers and began the mass clean up of camp and Bunk 22. It felt like a bitter sweet ending. One half of me was relieved to have my life back and my sense of personal space. The other half ached for the experience that was coming to an end and the fear that I would never see some of my, now closest, friends ever again. But endings are inevitable and I know they will be a huge part of my traveling adventure.

Once we'd cleaned the camp from top to toe, the Appel Farm staff came together for the Staff Banquet on Saturday night to celebrate the nine weeks we'd spent together. We drank, we were merry and we saw the last few hours of each other's company were the best we could make them. My staff superlative (the 'award' you are voted for by the staff) was the person most likely to surprise you with another hidden talent.
I think that summed up my Appel Farm experience. I knew when I started this international adventure that I would be challenged and pushed. I knew camp would change me, but I didn't know that I would come out the other end feeling more like a writer than ever. And not just a writer, but an artist. I have spent nine weeks utterly submersed in the arts - visual, performance and literary. I have rediscovered passions which have long been in hibernation, not to mention igniting new interests. I have dabbled in ceramics and learnt the sheer pleasure of throwing clay on a wheel. I've learnt how to intergrate typography into my creative writing and become addicted to a whole new art form. I was employed by Appel Farm but I got so much more out of camp than just money and the counselling experience.

As the rain poured down on the 22nd August, I could not have dreamed a more dramatic way to say goodbye to my friends and the farm. We stood in the carpack, the rain soaking through out clothes and luggage, tears soaking through our cheeks, utterly unable to say goodbye to each other. It felt like a surgeon was removing something from me I never knew was there until the scalpal was slicing through. As the bus to NYC drove away and I sat cold and wet from the rain and tears, shivering from 'the fear' that I would never see Appel Farm again,  it seemed surreal that this was the end. After everything, after what felt like a lifetime of trying and then nine amazing weeks, a bus driving through the rain was marking the end.

And as I type this from a Starbucks on West End Ave, NYC, my throat closing over at the memories and the friendships which have redefined my sense of self, I can only hope the road that eventually got me to Appel Farm would eventually lead me back.

Ciao for now. xo