The Duality of Water

majestic, rhythmic, serene / sinister, powerful, destructive

My family spent the day at the pool yesterday, the same way we spend the 4th of July most years. My kids gorged themselves on desserts from the potluck, squirted water guns, played Jump the Rope, and competed in splash contests. They crawled into their beds last night with slightly pink cheeks from the sun (though sunscreen was applied repeatedly!), happy and exhausted in that way you get after a day in the sun and water.

While they drifted off to sleep, I was glued to the internet, reading with horror about the flooding in Texas Hill Country. The news about Camp Mystic—a place I’d never heard of before last night—hit me especially hard. Summer camp has had an outsized impact on my life; from ages six to twenty-three, overnight camp was part of my summer. As soon as I was old enough, I spent my entire summer working at a summer camp. For three of those summers, I was a counselor in the youngest girls’ cabin, with campers around the same age as the missing girls from Camp Mystic are reported to be.

As a former camp counselor—and a parent who will be sending my own child off to overnight camp later this summer—I am incredibly heartbroken about the devastation the flood left in its wake. Summer camp can truly be the most magical place, and for everyone at Camp Mystic (or who had a child at Camp Mystic) this week, it turned into a nightmare.¹

My children spending their day happily in the pool while other children were swept away in floodwaters is a hard thing to wrap my mind around. I wrote this poem after a devastating flood in my own state of North Carolina last fall, where I was struggling with the same feelings—relief that my own children were safe, sound, happy, and unaffected; heartbreak for those in the path of the flood.²

1. I know other camps were affected, but it seems like Camp Mystic is the only one reporting missing campers. I think it goes without saying, but just to be clear: my heart is broken for anyone who was in the path of the floods, whether they were at a summer camp, on vacation, or in their own home.

2. There is certainly not a shortage of disasters and terrible things in the world to be heartbroken about, but this is one of those things that just strikes closer to home.