Notes from a GFC Counselor
by Emma Oscherwitz
Counselor, Volleyball Specialist, Songleader, and Cornerstone Fellow
It’s a difficult task to write a few short sentences about my decade that I’ve spent at GFC. My campers will tell you that when I talk, I TALK, especially when the topic matters to me as much as camp does. If I’m being honest, some of my earlier years at GFC were a big fat blur. I remember Bonim (my first and only year going 2nd session). I remember sharing a cabin with a boys bunk, and there was a plywood wall in the middle of the bathroom that we would knock on to communicate. I remember walking into the Teatron (theater) and watching Joy teach her bunk a dance for the variety show. I remember walking out of the Chadar Ochel (dining hall) on closing day as people from yellow team and red team threw dodgeballs at each other around me. And I remember having fun! So I came back.
The next year, when I came back for Niviim, I was the one throwing the dodgeballs during Maccabiah. In Koh/Sho, I was the one learning a bunk dance from Joy with the rest of my bunk for the variety show. And I had fun again, so I kept coming back.
As I got older, things started to change. Of course, there was drama every once in a while, and life started to get a little more complicated in general. My homework was more than just tracing letters and coloring fruits in with their right color. It became 20 pages of reading in my Texas history textbook and math problems I had to ask my dad for help with. But camp was pretty consistent in that I would come here for the summer, throw some dodgeballs, learn a bunk dance, and have fun. For a while, I thought change was bad. I hated it, wanted to resist it or change it. And I got upset when, obviously, I couldn’t keep the world from changing as time went on. I still have trouble sometimes, because it would make anyone sad to see a great thing come to an end.
And then, at this last Shabbat, I just zoned out on that house way behind the Beit Knesset that sits on a hill with the sunset behind it. And a thought popped into my mind: “you can’t change change, but the change will change you.” I wrote it down in my notes app, and one of my campers sitting next to me read it over my shoulder. She said “wow, that’s so true.”
Sometimes, as you get older, you realize that your experience in life matches a lot of other people’s. You struggle the same, you laugh the same, you love the same. And I realized that if I freak out this much about changes in my life, then other people must too.
So, for anyone who gets a little nervous about change, soak it all up while you’re there in the moment. Take a picture, write about your day in a journal, anything to remember where you were while you were there. It’s easy to forget to do that, and then look back when you’re me and wish you had done it while you still had all the details. Give yourself a story to remember and share so that even when the time and date tell you something is over, it won’t actually be over for you.
Shabbat shalom!