Lightbulb Over Head Blog

[I was just looking through my computer and I discovered my chapel speech from my senior year of high school. As I read through it, I was reminded of a part of myself I'd almost forgotten. It's been forever since I felt maternal or even felt like a part of a sisterhood. It's not that I can't live without those things, but it's always interesting to reflect on how I've changed over the years and what parts of me have grown vs. what parts of me have become cloistered away. So, dear readers, I invite you to join me at the gorgeous non-denominational chapel at Tabor Academy in Marion, Massachusetts as I give my speech. It is Fall and the wooden pews creak every so often as a student shifts uncomfortably. Light streams through the bright stained glass windows depicting Columbus, Magellan, Shakespeare, and other great learners and explorers.

Up at the front of the chapel, I am standing at the pulpit. I am 18 and I am terrified. I inhale a deep breath, taking in the sea of my teachers and my peers, and then begin.]

“You’re gonna be a camp counselor?” Matt said in disbelief.

“Yup. That’s the way it looks right now.” I shrugged.

“Where?” He asked

“Camp Seafarer. It’s in North Carolina.”

“Camp Sea-WHAT?” Matt asked skeptically.

“Seafarer.” I said.

“Ha. Anne’s gonna work at Camp SEAFAIRY this summer.” He pointed and laughed.

That was the initial reaction I received from my friends last year when I announced that I had just been asked to be the director of the musical at Camp Seafarer, for girls, in Arapahoe, N.C. They were a little doubtful to say the least. They all saw me as a hopeless cynical drama/music geek who limited herself to only black attire. As far as kids went, some of my friends had seen a faculty child use a lacrosse stick to launch a graphing calculator at me. However, from my point of view, it seemed a simple task. I had directed a one act at Tabor and I didn’t think directing a show with kids could be that much harder. I might be an only child, but I had been a babysitter since age 10 and now I lived in a dorm. I figured that taking care of a cabin full of girls and living with them every day couldn’t possibly be that tough. I had no reservations when I signed my contract. What I didn’t know, is that I had just signed away my soul to Satan for two months of the summer.

I spent most of the first two weeks wondering what crime I had committed on God’s green earth that fate chose me to be a camp counselor. Everything seemed to go wrong. Not only was I accidentally welcoming people to “Camp Seafairy” on opening day. Oh no. That was the VERY LEAST of my problems. Southern drawls whirled around me and wafted on every breeze, while my Chicago accent sliced through the air. I was an only child stuck in a world of six hundred little sisters. Out of these six hundred girls, I looked after and lived with twelve thirteen year olds, obsessed with soccer, boys, and the fifth Harry Potter book, the thought of which made me ill. I felt like it would be impossible to make a connection with any of them. No matter how hard I tried to relate to their problems and advise them, it just seemed unnatural.

I was also in charge of directing “The Secret Garden,” a musical which the Camp Director selected because it seemed like a “cute” musical for kids. She had assumed it to be a nice little story about a little girl who plants a few seeds in some forgotten garden and learns how to fit in with her new family. However, the show really turned out to be about a rich hunchback haunted by the ghost of his dead wife and a little girl hardened by the death of her parents in the cholera epidemic who has to leave India and live in his lonely colossal mansion in the middle of nowhere. The show was entirely inappropriate for kids ages seven to sixteen, calling for English and Yorkshire accents and a lyric soprano, not to mention two strong male leads which would now have to be sung by girls. I heard 109 children audition for the show. Out of 109 girls, seventy five percent sang “Tomorrow” from Annie. Suicide was starting to sound like a good option. Things were only complicated further when I was told that I would not be allowed to make cuts.  So now, not only had I ended up with 109 girls that I had to fit into a musical with only 12 roles, oh no, one of them was a 16 year old girl with turrets syndrome and was constantly screaming obscenities during rehearsal. In short, it was musical mayhem, an utter nightmare. My jaw dropped as I realized that I would be spending three hours daily in room with 109 girls trying to sing high “C’s” only to return at the end of the day to a cabin full of thirteen year old girls arguing over something so entirely trivial as speculations on who would die in the next Harry Potter book. I wanted to scream. My co-counselors and I started to replace the word “camper” with “hell-beast.” In otherwords “You look horrible, what happened last night?” “Oh, I had a run in with a hell beast.” Or “I just got a call; The hell-beasts are on the loose in the drama building, I’d better go over there and take care of the situation.”

One day, I was contemplating how bad a life sentence in prison could possibly be, when I unexpectedly had to take one of my girls to the health center. I was walking across a bridge with her and I was trying to make her laugh in an effort to distract her from her discomfort. Judging by the smile creeping across her face, it seemed like I had been relatively successful in humoring her. As we walked, she reached over and put her arm around my waste, and I put my arm around her shoulders. She looked up at me in this picture perfect moment and said, “You are so cool. You’re like a big sister, but a cool one who’s funny and doesn’t mess with my stuff.” She grinned and I laughed as I realized that in her own little thirteen-year-old way she was telling me that I had reached her, that for her, I had made a difference in just two weeks.

It became so vivid to me, then, what I had been doing wrong all this time. I had been so focused on what wasn’t going right for me that I had somehow let myself forget about these kids. Yeah, from time to time, things got hard, smiles weren’t genuine, and the hell beasts annoyed me beyond description. Those things were all distractions. I had forgotten that in signing that contract, I was agreeing to live not for myself, but for six hundred wonderfully individual girls who needed me to help them grow and learn. From that day forward, I dedicated myself to these campers who taught me so much about the importance of selflessness. Before I knew it, I felt like I wasn’t working at all.

It was around that time when I called Matt Linton to fill him in on how things had been going. I told him how the summer had begun horribly but that lately things had been going well. I told him about how my girls thought I was cool. His take on the situation was succinct and simply put. “You’re soooo going soft,” he said. I was totally opposed to that. I most certainly was not going SOFT. I was just getting… sentimental. I…cared.

Ok, Matt. I was going soft.

I hate to admit it, but I cried on the last night of camp during the candle light service. I cried and cried until there were no tears left and then I cried again after the campers left while I was packing my own things to go home as I realized that my most meaningful memories weren’t frustrating rehearsals or trying to avoid teenybopper conversations, but the look on the faces of girls who were bursting with pride as they took their final bow at the end of the play, girls who reached out to each other and supported each other at every turn, and in knowing that I was behind their successes, lessons, and confidence.

Since the end of camp, as my room-mate can attest, I receive atleast two long distance phone calls a week and innumerable instant messages from my campers.

The other day, I received an email from Betsy, one of my campers who was in the musical. She announced that she had just gotten cast in the musical at her middle school and that she couldn’t have done it without me. She called me a hero. And for the first time, I felt like one.  I was a big sister… but a cool one.

Sooner or later you will face a brutal reality:

Your high school reunion.

The fear will climb you like a maypole and you will think your are thirty pounds fatter than you actually are. You will check the guest list for your high school crushes or old boyfriends and be warmed by those old flames, followed by an endless panic attack concerning seeing them again. You’ll destroy your closet looking for the perfect ensemble and plan hair and makeup for a week ahead of time. Moreover, you’ll plan how to describe your job so that you don’t sound like a glorified receptionist.

You say to yourself + 30 imaginary pounds in the mirror, “Oh college, how have you failed me so completely?”

Then the day arrives. It’s the moment of truth.

Results may vary after this point. I can only speak for myself.

A certain amount of anticipation and dread accompanied my decision to attend my high school reunion, but I never struggled with whether or not to go. I knew from the moment I got that letter inviting me to “The School by the Sea” for my 5th year reunion that I would be there.

Let me explain. My high school education wasn’t what you would call normal. I went to boarding school one thousand miles away from home. When I tell new acquaintances this, they usually react in the following way.

Wide-eyed with wonderment and a mischievous gleam in their eye they ask, “What did you do?”

This reaction makes me laugh because so many people can’t imagine sending their son or daughter of to school across the country at the tender age of fourteen. They figure you must have done something so horrible that you had be sent away to “learn to respect your limits or your elders” or both.

Let’s set the record straight. I wasn’t packed off and sent to boarding school because I’m some sort of juvenile delinquent. I chose to leave home.

See, I always loved summer camp. I went to Camp Seafarer in North Carolina for 8 years and worked there as a counselor for two. I wouldn’t be who I am today without my experiences there. The first year I went, I was ten. I was a shy girl who barely spoke up except to say incredibly awkward things. I was the kind of child who could play on a playground for hours and not bother to learn the names of the other children I was playing with because I was too terrified to ask. Facing a month away from home was frightening and exciting, but when I got there, I slowly came out of my shell. I blossomed, some might say. I went out to activities every day and set goals for myself, striving every day to achieve them. I learned how to sail, how to tie a bowline knot, and how to jump a hurdle on horseback. It was at Camp Seafarer that I was asked to dance by a boy for the first time. There were a lot of firsts at camp, and the best part of it all was that I was in control of my own destiny.

I’m an only child, you see. Every step of the way up until that point, my parents had been there guiding, supporting, micromanaging, and frogmarching me towards some undisclosed success. There are advantages and disadvantages to being the sole object of your mother and father’s love. I was given every possible opportunity; piano lessons, ice skating lessons, vacations, tutors, and educational trips. Anything I asked for, I got and usually more. Every time I soared I was rewarded and every time I fell, I was supported, analyzed, and talked through how to improve upon or avoid this mistake again. I never had that integral sink or swim moment.

However, at Camp Seafarer, I was in control. I scheduled my activities and I auditioned for plays. When I failed, it was up to me to fix it. When I succeeded, I simply basked in the glow of a job well done. It was enough because it was all mine.

Back in Chicago, I went to a middle school that ended in eighth grade and when I reached that point, I had to apply to high schools. I applied to every private school in the city, including my own personal Jesuit nightmare, St. Ignatius College Preperatory School. When I visited, I hated it. The students seemed dispassionate as they marched to classes in their uniforms. They answered questions when they had to and not because they wanted to. They were smart, make no mistake, but I couldn’t see myself fitting in. As the year forged on, I became restless. I wasn’t particularly happy about any of the choices of schools I had applied to thus far.

One day, I saw a friend of mine looking through a boarding school brochure. Inside its laminated story book pages there were kids on bicycles, grassy quads, blue skies, pine trees, and red track fields. It showed kids making clay bowls on spinning wheels and singing in a capella groups. I knew that I could probably find some of those things at the private schools in Chicago, but an idea had formed in my head. Judging by my success at camp, perhaps I could achieve more away from the loving arms of my parents then I could within their reach.

With my parent’s permission, I applied to boarding schools all over the east coast. The next fall, I found myself at Tabor Academy in a dorm with twenty other girls, most from the area around school, whereas I was 1,000 miles away from home, and completely out of my element.

I had the unique opportunity to decide who I was. No one knew me. I could make first impressions on an entire community. Even knowing this, I was terribly afraid I would make some awful blunder.

The first few nights there, I sat on one of the granite benches on the water front. Even though I had worked so hard to get away from home, I missed it. I knew my mother and father would have had some useful knowledge to impart. All they way to school, my parents had pelted me with so much advice that I couldn’t see straight when we arrived. I couldn’t wait for them to leave me the hell alone. As we hugged goodbye till Thanksgiving, my mother wagged her finger. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” she said with great reverence. Afterward, that piece of Polonius’ advice from Hamlet has served as their final words to me whenever they drop me off at my current place of residence.

The seabreeze tossed my thick bush of brown hair across my face as I looked out over Buzzards Bay. All of their advice was slipping through my fingers. I was here to make my way without them.

Sometimes, I thought, you should be careful what you wish for.

I stayed at Tabor for four years. The first two were hellish and I was unhappy. I wanted to be wonderful at science and sports, but that just wasn’t in the cards. Nothing seemed to come naturally to me, least of all social aptitude. No one enjoyed being friends with a stuck up city girl who loved Star Wars and sang the Moulin Rouge version of  “Lady Marmalade” at least fifty times a day in her dorm room while everyone else was trying to study. It wasn’t until I laid anchor in the theater and music community that I found a foothold for myself at Tabor. Teachers and students started looking at me differently. They knew my name and they didn’t call me out on dress code infractions as much. I did the musical every year and toured with my a capella group every spring. It was a damn fine gig if I do say so myself. My last two years at Tabor were some of the happiest in my life. My friends were like family and theater was a dream. I felt so lucky to be there every day.

And so it was that I entered highschool wanting to be an astronaut and left with a passion for the stage, headed to New  York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, no less. I graduated with awards for contribution to theater and choral music and I left thinking I knew a lot more about myself than I would have if I had gone to school back at home in Chicago. My parents were still extremely proud, and supportive, but I had done this for myself.

I had no idea what awaited me in New York. I knew I would get through it as I had gotten through life at Tabor, but I was in no way prepared for my first year there, let alone the other three. It was filled with art, non-sexual nakedness, dance, shock, and student rush tickets to Broadway shows. I was back in an urban environment, pulsing with energy, buzzing with life. I was filled with passion for what I was doing every single day. Imagine: No more math classes. It was heavenly. I thank my lucky stars every day that my parents let me go and paid for my education at Tisch.

Now, it’s a year after my graduation from NYU and I’m living the life of a starving artist. Like everyone else in America, I have felt the pain of our declining economy, losing my job and not being able to get a new one for four months at a time. In December, I broke up with the man I can’t stop loving. In January, I saved a suicidal room mate’s life when I found her bleeding out in the bathtub. In February, I lost a dear friend and collaborator to a successful suicide attempt. By March, I was still jobless and was feeling the desperate strain of my independent reality weigh on me heavily every second of every single day. This is my life, I thought. I can’t stand my life right now.

It had been almost a year since I had performed in a full scale production. I could feel my life blood and passion begging for attention like a poorly tended hearth living in the pit of my stomach. My skin was going numb.

That’s when I got the letter inviting me back to Tabor Academy for my high school reunion.

How can I face all of these wonderfully smart and successful people? I thought. I’ll be a laughing stock again… or worse, they won’t recognize me at all.

I’m not fearless, but I like to think I have a bit more backbone than to let a few momentary insecurities stop me from going through such an important right of passage.

The truth is, as the day approached, I realized how much I had missed that community. I had spent so much of my life pushing forward and away from anything or anyone that had nurtured me along the way, but now I dearly missed the cradle of support that I got from my parents, teachers, and friends at Tabor. I had been a ship my whole life, struggling to break free from my mooring, but now I was ready to return to port, more ready than I ever thought I would be.

As I arrived back on campus, my heart pounded in my chest. My body felt weak, almost euphoric. Many of my classmates had remained in the same area and saw each other more often, but true to form I had left the nest and sailed into uncharted waters.

The whole weekend was like a glorious out of body experience. People I knew well and people I hadn’t all asked how I’d been and seemed to care about my response. I realized that I cared about theirs and I was proud of their numerous accomplishments. I remembered more first and last names than I thought I would. Seeing my teachers struck such a resonant chord with me. They had spent four years as my surrogate parents, setting me up for success, talking me through rough patches, and inviting me for Sunday afternoon tea. The whole reunion was like a warm celebratory ritual with dancing, drinking, and storytelling.

Near the end of the evening I was laughing with a friend who had gone with me to the Caribbean aboard the school’s tall ship to do an on-site marine studies class. We were resting our feet as the rest of our classmates danced the night away. He asked me what I was up to and I told him about the play I was writing, my novel, my new apartment, and how much i enjoyed the process of developing new musicals.

“You’re living the dream.” He laughed and smiled at me.

Until he said that, I had completely forgotten that I was.

At the end of the weekend, I felt my ship had been thoroughly resuplied. I had collected information and maps, and made plans for new adventures, confident that I could sail across the fated sea with a warm wind at my back.

I have decided that once Odysseus returned to Ithaca, he must have longed for another voyage.