It�s just before 4:00 a.m. I was asleep but now I�m awake and I don�t seem ready to go back to sleep anytime soon. I�m bothered and I know what�s bothering me. Life slipped one over on me. I asked all the right questions and got all the right answers but they were not accurate answers. And now I�ve broken a vow.

This vow was the �no child of mine will ever�� variety. Well, a child of mine IS and we�ll just have to make it work. Kicking myself will not solve the problem and, at this point, I�m not even sure it�s mine to solve. It�s probably too late for that.

When I was seventeen, I began to work summer camps in the Catskills. The first time I went to camp (and I had never been to a residential camp before at all), I went to camp as one of two music counselors. I was the youngest counselor there. I had asked all the right questions. Five or six days a week, counselors got rest time off and on and on the others they covered for each other. Five or six days a week, counselors got evenings off and on the others they covered for each other. There were six days off in a summer which, with training and orientation, ran nine weeks.

EXCEPT if you were one of the music counselors. The music counselors worked through rest periods because they had to direct the campers in the camper show and that was done during rest periods. They worked in the evenings because they had to direct the counselors in the counselor show and that was done in the evenings. But they did get their six days off and those days off were scheduled right into the summer schedule.

As the summer went on, I became very, very tired and then I began to get sick. I got a cold. As my colds sometimes do, it went into bronchitis (or at least I thought it had because although they sent campers to an actual physician as soon as they sneezed, counselors were not sent until they were almost dead---or their mothers called the camp and complained.) I felt exploited. I was exploited.

And I looked around. I started to say to myself that no one was treated worse than the music counselors but then I realized someone was: the babysitter. The babysitter that the director had brought up with his family was in a much worse position. She was my age but she was not a counselor and not part of the counselor social set. She too worked through rest hours so that the director and his wife could have their own rest hours. She too worked through evenings so that the director and his wife could have their own evenings. And she rarely got her days off. She was supposed to get days off but there was no other babysitter so her days off would be more disruptive of camp life than mine. She worked, she worked hard and she worked alone.

And I vowed that no child of mine would be a babysitter at camp for the entire summer. But the vow is broken. Kat is the traditional camp babysitter even though it was not supposed to happen. I suspected it from her diary and, last night, she finally figured out her e-mail and I confirmed it in e-mail. Kat is the babysitter at camp for the entire summer.

She was not supposed to be. She was supposed to be going up there with another babysitter to start a day care unit. They would pool kids and have each other for a social life. They would have each other for backup. Her contract talked about days off and the information that came with it spoke of time off during the day. I asked questions and I got answers that made me think this situation was different. And I don�t think people lied to me exactly, I think their answers were just inaccurate. They did not think everything through and, as Kat has alluded to, they are completely disorganized.

I would have feared the disorganization if I had known but I didn�t. They did not seem disorganized when Kat arrived. They knew when she was coming. They knew where she should live. They were whisking her off to join the staff. I was at ease when I left.

But somewhere, after I knew she was out of books after a week (a new record even for her), she was writing a lot, and all her diary ever spoke of was one little boy, I began to get a sinking feeling.

And today I know. I can�t sleep. is no unit and no other babysitter. I�ve broken my vow.

___

P.S. to Elsinora--please continue to check your e-mail. Thanks!

|