certain things, however clearly and throat-clearingly they seem to die, resurface. like henry james, who is once more making eating something between unpleasant and impossible. out of patience, i’m seeing a specialist on monday, for which i have to take off part of my first day of work at au. also like distant sun. neither it seems can stay away.

i finished ender’s shadow. that’s more or less all i did today, besides reading through the times front section and arts, and the post front section and style. my two weeks of ignorance/bliss at swat left me unsatisfied; i needed to glut, just like i needed to spend an hour and a half on the train back home scribbling as much as i could recall from those matchlessly busy days. from the paper today i learned: that this martha business has gotten blown out of proportion;

that in what to me seemed like a file-this-under-Duh, the 9th circuit court has decided that reciting the pledge of alliegence in schools is unconstitutional. congress and the house reacted by marching out to the steps, rebelliously reciting the thing, and then belting out an impromptu “God Save America.” patriotism or politics, it’s sickening. and more so, instead of cheering, both the times and the post simply sniffed. anyway, another judge stayed the decision pending appeal so its effect will likely never be felt;

and that the word is that the palestinians will have a proper election in january, for which no credible candidate will run and after which they will once more have arafat as a leader and the world will once more be at an impasse.

i don’t think i can be blamed for burying myself in at-least-it-ends-happily science fiction.

brilliance and genius. i sat through sweeney in a daze. christine baranski, character actress of cybill and just plain general fame, played mrs. lovett, and 2000 tony award winner brian stokes mitchell inhabited the demon of fleet street with such intensity it made you shiver to look at him.

before the show started, one of my old yiddish teachers from high school approached me with a hesitant “ester?” during intermission, a jds parent sidled up asking, “bloom?” and after, i passed a lovely young black woman with a bouquet of flowers whose presence i remembered even if not precisely her face. i doubled back and said, “tessa?” “yes!” she cried. “i knew i recognized you — it’s the hair.” the flowers, i surmised, were for jane pesci-townsend, a member of the sweeney ensemble and understudy to mrs. lovett, and once director of a summer camp tessa and i were in eight years ago. i didn’t particularly enjoy the camp — at 11, i was the youngest camper, so i didn’t get a noteworthy role. tessa, on the other hand, virtually stole the show as little red riding hood. tessa smiled radiantly and a man whispered that she should go quickly to catch jane. i told her to communicate my best and watched her go.

once upon a time, i would have done anything for a life upon the wicked stage.

in a couple hours i’ll be hauling my stuff to a hopefully still operational amtrak train and making it home in time to catch a killer (heh heh) production of Sweeney Todd. apparently Company was the best production likely to be put up in my lifetime, or so said my father cheerfully. he sold my ticket to one of a huge crowd of eager young men from new york who laughed and wept and applauded after every song so that’s some consolation anyway.

the past couple days have been busy in a quieter way. lots of grant grunt work. lots of seeing ben, which has been nice considering i didn’t get much of that the past few weeks, what with my sick and stress and all. lots of seeing the como girls gloriously unfettered, which amounts to lots of giggling. lots of reading — i finished moo and am about to start ender’s shadow. actually everything i’ve read recently i’ve loved: odd girl out, the french lieutenant’s woman, ender’s game, on krissy’s little sister’s recommendation. i’m just on a roll.

cutely, the other nite sarah, danny, ben and i went out on a double date. we went bowling — ben won, and i lost but more respectably than i would have if the machine hadn’t, for some reason, kept adding points to my score now and then. then we stopped at a little restaurant in media where i showed them how to balance salt shakers (the waitress was not impressed) and we recounted How we Met stories. naturally each involved the internet.

yesterday evening we took the CITs out for dinner. this morning i packed, and in doing so i went through the Affirmations the girlz wrote me one last time. this really was one of the most memorable experiences i’ve had so far, in large part because it is so different from my usual modus operandi. that, of course, is why i learned this much, and probably why i’m this glad i went through with it.

it occurred to me that this week has made me fearless. other things too, i’m sure; i haven’t even begun to assemble the list of Things I’ve Learned, which i do after any interesting experience/period of time. but particularly, fearlessness, because once you’ve explained oral sex in technical terms to a group of 20 wide-eyed children, you can do anything.

not all of yesterday was quite so invigorating. after a week that went more smoothly than we dared dream, yesterday was tough.. kids squabbled, and whined and cried, and vomited at 3 a.m. and then at 45 minute intervals thereafter. we counselors stumbled along, doing as best we could. certain high points kept us buoyed too, like when the campers and CITs performed a skit they’d created, a send-up of the first three days of camp, and then later, affirmations, where the kids obediently and quietly spent an hour exchanging sweet nothings. one girl, who hurled a water balloon straight into my eye from a couple feet away, wrote that she’d never forget me.

but in the end, the stress of the week combined with lack of sleep caught up with me. henry james staged one last stand, keeping me up shivering all nite on a pink couch in the hallway. sorelle found me around 7 and escorted me home, scolding for not having woken her. the upshot of this was that i neither went to dc nor the comotion goodbye brunch and awards ceremony. i regained my bearings at some point during the afternoon, talked to ilana, read the first half of moo, and ate eggs for dinner with the fatigued, frazzled como counselors, spasming in laughter to margaret cho.

i’m so amazed that we did it. so proud that we managed to strike our tiny blow against ignorance, gender roles, homophobia, and the media. as far as we can tell, too, they enjoyed it as much as we did. maybe even more.

exhaustion. but must pack and trudge back to girlz. thank god for the CIT hour that will give us a break – possibly enough time to watch i’m the one that i want which i bought at blockbuster in a spontaneous splurge last nite, along w/ two others i’ve never seen. we counselors are functioning on minimal sleep, very little energy, patience residue, and sheer force of will, and it’s beginning, i’m afraid, to show. still have to get through this evening and the sleepover tonite, and then i’ll drag myself home tomorrow for two days in which i will pity any poor stray ten to thirteen year old that crosses my path and bears the brunt of a week’s worth of repression.

puberty went better than anyone expected. some giggling, a little shrieking, lots of solemn faces, and we were done. liz gave an excellent demonstration of how to use a pad, a tampon with an applicator, and one without. the girlz watched her, spellbound. we also went through how to get stains out (cold water, tho apparently hydrogen peroxide also works), the right way to shave (not, we stressed, that you have to), and made abundantly clear to one startled girl that men can’t have babies even if they do get a shot. i don’t know what kind of shot she’s talking about, but then, i’ve never seen junior.

of course we didn’t have the luxury of sitting around afterwards patting ourselves on the back, though petunia, our lifesize naked woman hanging on the wall, each part of her colored in and labeled “left fallopian tube,” “right ovary,” etc., by the girls, smiled down at us beatifically. we had to keep counseloring, through a pastel surrealist art project, a woods walk, and group poetry writing. and we’re desperately searching for an activity to do tomorrow to tie together the as-yet-dangling threads of sex, sexuality, relationships, friendships, and family.

at one point, i was taking a break, savoring matilda on a sunny bench. the littlest-looking of the girls, a hyperactive inquisitive ten year old, approached me. “you lonely?” she said. i explained i was reading and asked if she wanted to be read to. “naw, i hate reading. can’t sit still,” she said. after a pause, she added, in reference to a question i’d answered a few days ago, “why don’t you want to have kids?” i don’t know if i do or i don’t, i said. i just want to make sure i’ll be a good parent. “you’ll be a good parent,” she said. she tilted her head and grinned at me, then dashed away.

danny was willing to cook for us tonite, which is much appreciated as we can hardly stand. i ended yesterday despondent, convinced i had no talent with children and worse, that my ineptitude reflected my general difficulties interacting within a group. cuz, as i said to sorelle, kids aren’t that different from people.

maybe because i rejoined the girlz an attitude far removed from the one in which i’d left them, in turn maybe because today was my last day taking horrid medication as an appetizer to every meal, everything went cheerfully-smooth. we’ve had one discussion per day and our first two went discouragingly badly. our girls, however talkative amongst themselves, clam up when it comes to serious topics, or as addie suggests, abstract thought. we agonized over how to plan today’s, Women in School, and finally settled on performing four short skits from our experience. and it worked.

we also played capture the flag, and sorelle and i managed to teach them basic html code, and sarah led them in communal story-writing, all successfully. every day, at least to my mind, is more of a triumph than the previous one.

tomorrow we’re counting on the trend to continue. tomorrow we’re dragging that old horse puberty into the ring and beating it to death. in the gentlest, most compassionate, funniest possible way. i’ve lost track of the number of conversations we’ve had among ourselves as to how-to. secretly i think we all think we’re unqualified. puberty, to many of us, for whatever reason or whatever way, = failure and embarassment. but, of course, that’s also why we’re doing this. we have our own demons to be exorcised, and stressing to a different generation of girlz that the failure and embarassment they’ll inevitably encounter is natural and oh-so-common will hopefully convince us all.

but nostalgia aside, about today. i began pretty tired, having not slept much or well despite the fact that i left the gathering — of ross, rebecca, dan shargell, alyssa, the elusive mark d’a., and the spectre of noam chomsky — at a wise hour. food disagreed with my stomach, the result of nervousness perhaps as much as the lingering remnants of henry james, and i didn’t participate in the often-hilarious quintessentially swattie conversation as much as i would have liked to have. in fact i felt distinctly unfunny. but i enjoyed the company, as i’d enjoyed the brunch earlier in the day, my other break from otherwise nonstop comotion prep, with ross, alyssa, and rebecca around that same table.

this morning we rose at 7, power-breakfasted as a group, paraded over to set up the space, putter and fidget and go over last minute details. at 9, finally, the girls arrived. i snapped pictures of each individually under the official co|motion banner and marveled at the range of heights. that, naturally, was to be the first of many marvellings at the range of personality, experiential, physical and character differences in the 10 year olds as opposed to the 13’ers. i don’t think there could be another age bracket where the gaps are so glaring. fortunately everyone, so far, has been getting along.

it’s just exhausting caring for kids. entertaining them, keeping energy levels up for their sakes, subduing ironic impulses, not to mention to actual activities and games. the final one, a scavenger hunt that sent us scampering around campus, wiped me out.

two girls latched onto me in the afternoon. one was a skinny, brainy girl with an attitude. the other i had mentally singled out early on, with no better recommendation than her redheadedness, as the kind of child i would like to have were i to decide to become the kind of person who has kids. with them i found myself gradually relaxing, allowing a natural ester-response now and then to slip out. they didn’t seem shocked; they certainly didn’t find someone else to run to. and in a way i haven’t analyzed yet, it was comforting as well as flattering when the little redhead declared that she only wanted to scavenger hunt with me. don’t expect a trite comment about seeing her hand slip from mine as she ran to her mother at the end of the day; but, to be fair, i have six more days of this.

i wish i remembered myself at age ten more sharply. snippets, of course: i was sad. that’s a prevailing memory, though the cause of it eludes me now as much as it probably did then. i remembering crying at night. my english teacher, the fabulous mrs. z., encouraged us to write our thoughts in journals in class; she allowed us, if we wanted, to mark certain pages private. it surprises me in retrospect how much i trusted that she wouldn’t unfold and discover my scribbled unhappiness. although, come to think of it, my parents did take me to see a psychologist at the behest of one of my teachers. after a month, the psychologist decided i didn’t need further counseling. i had been deathly afraid that the underlying message of those wednesday sessions was that i was crazy and so was more than relieved not to have to go. for whatever reason, i don’t remember being as sad after that.

other things happened in fifth grade. school became more difficult; it began to require actual work on my part, which after years of being petted and praised was an abrupt shift. my friend d. and i sowed 1 – 800 numbers from magazines and spent afternoons soliciting information. our favorite ads were for modeling agencies, and other friends of mine swear (though i have no recollection of this) that d. and i marched around, ordering people to remove glasses if they wore them or other impediments to scrutiny, then after scrutinizing each face declared them either modeling material or hopeless. that seems unreasonably cruel; surely i was nicer than that.

fifth grade was poker at lunchtime, a first date that led to a first kiss and my first relationship (the first in my grade, too.) fifth grade was noticing “cool” kids for the first time and hanging out on the fringe of their group, occassionally accepted, occasionally sensing the vast differences between them and me. fifth grade was jamie and north carolina. i remember fifth grade better than i really remember me.

camp starts tomorrow. the girlz all are doing jigs in nervousness whereas i’m relatively calm. that is quite possibly because i haven’t processed that it’s happening yet, that at 8:15 in the brightearly morning, 14 shiny happy faces will be looking up at us, trusting us, slipping their soft paws in ours, opening their hearts for the love we have promised them to share. there is a large naked woman named petunia hanging on the wall outside my room, and a blow-up crossection of her reproductive organs on my door. this should serve as reminder enough — yet the whole thing just doesn’t seem real yet.

but we putter along, meeting after meeting, going over curricula, drilling each other on the transmission of HIV, flipping through are you there god? it’s me, margaret and reminiscing about the part judy blume played in our childhoods, debating the importance of bringing up masterbation v. letting the girls ask, alternatingly laughing and worrying. sorelle and i spent the bulk of yesterday on a marathon shopping trip. one man in a video store claimed that a league of their own was out of print. the highlight came in a bathroom when sorelle outsmarted the tampon dispenser. after she handed over the demanded $.50 and then it refused to dislodge the item in question, she gave the thing a Look, took off her watch, stuck her arm in virtually up to the elbow, and pulled one free herself. my hero.

later, in the parking lot of BJ’s, we found a copy of toni morrisson’s sula, which we hadn’t purchased. after shrugging at each other, we decided someone simply wanted us to read this book — and as it’s one of the two of hers i haven’t read yet, i’m only too pleased to oblige.