I have two words. The first is Kesem, and the second is camp. Toss them together (not in that order), and behold: Camp Kesem.

Now I want to tell you all about this thing/place/group called Camp Kesem, and what it means to me now that I have experienced my first week as a counselor.

Getting Into It

My first meeting as a Camp Kesem – UW Outreach Committee member was during my last quarter of freshman year. I went with my roommate, after she had been bugging me all year about going to one of these damn meetings with her. I knew the cause, (a free week-long summer camp for kids that have parents with cancer) and I definitely thought it sounded incredibly important, but I’ve never been heavily impacted by cancer, so I wasn’t sure if I wanted to dedicate my time to Kesem instead of something else I thought I might find to be more suited to me.

I am so glad I chose Kesem.

When I walked into the meeting, I was just starting to wrap up my first year as a rower and college student, so my mental state was annoyed by trying something else new after doing it what seemed like constantly for the past six months. The thing that shocked me though was how nice everyone was while meeting me. I came from a very judgemental place, and so for all of these weirdos to be so outrageously nice was a bit of a shock.

Afterwards, I don’t know if I was fully convinced, but I still went to as many meetings as I could, and then the school year was over, I went home to my parents for the summer, and nothing had really changed.

Then September rolled around and I started my second year on a new committee, the Development Committee, but I had no idea what to expect.

Getting Ready For It

The entire second year of my UW experience was peppered with Kesem. It wasn’t completely made of Kesem, because I wasn’t a coordinator, and I hadn’t even counseled at camp yet, so my responsibility was fairly simple. But Kesem was still there, and it was bright. The people I worked with for Kesem were all little points of light in my school year, because they always had a smile for me when I bumped into them around campus, and then I started doing the same thing. I started feeling some of the enthusiasm they shared for this camp, and there were friendships that started to grow in my heart, making me even more determined to be a part of it.

The Development Committee was fantastic. My roomie was one of the coordinators, and her co-coordinator was the sweetest, and kindest human being alive. They were a dream team, and working with them made my life a whole lot more fun. The other girls in my committee who had just joined Kesem or already been involved were incredible too, and we laughed more at our meetings than I have ever laughed anywhere else (besides camp).

My head was in Kesem, and I loved getting to know my new friends, but I still couldn’t figure out why I still wasn’t as fired up about this as I wanted to be. I knew it was a great cause, and I loved hanging out with the people who were making this camp happen because all of them are weirdly perfect, but something just wasn’t there yet.

Fast forward through a fall and winter of shenanigans, and I was finally to counselor trainings. I had already applied to be a counselor and was approved/accepted/recruited, so now all of the counselors had to attend these trainings that essentially taught us how to be Kesem and how to interact with mini humans. Some trainings were long – and before 10 am – so it was kind of hard to wake up and get my ass out of bed some mornings, but every single time I went, I knew it was worth it as soon as I got there.

Through the duration of planning and training, I also somehow managed to land the job of leading arts and crafts for camp once it happened, which is still incredible to me. (All of the crafts I ended up doing were completely foreign to me, so there was a bit of… panic the few weeks before camp too)

And then we actually went.

Being There

Okay, so the first thing I learned about camp is that it’s nothing without the kids. Since I was in charge of arts and crafts for the week, I left earlier than the busses, so I didn’t meet kids until I had already been at camp for almost 2 hours, and it definitely wasn’t camp until they arrived. The hills were the same and the buildings didn’t get up or change color, but as soon as I saw the swarm of kids at camp, my surroundings were completely different. These were the kids who I worked for all year to bring here, and these were the kids that I would be pouring paint on and covering in glitter all week. I was ready.

Throughout the week, I gave out a ridiculously generous amount of high fives, and I screamed and laughed louder and longer than I ever have. I cried, I smiled, I got stung by some asshole bee, and I met phenomenal kids that I will never forget.

These kids made me feel love like I never have before. Like the Grinch, my heart changed size, but I swear it grew to the point that it filled my entire body. My camp name is inspiration for the name of this blog/site, but now that I look at the name “Jukebox” post-camp, all I can think of  are the kids who screamed it at me all week, or decided to change it for the better (Mailbox and Juicebox were pretty popular).

As I sit and write this, my fingerprints are still healing from being burned off from too much tie dye, there is glitter on my scalp, and my nails are dyed along my cuticles. I have bruises on my legs and scrapes on my arms, a bee sting that still itches on my thigh, but my heart is so full and my mind is so clear, that I see every single one of those things on my body and I smile.

I know I was a leader and counselor and craft master to these kids, but I feel like they were also my counselors, my friends, and seeing each of their unique creations while they played in the Yurt was more fun than I have ever had.

Getting Over It?

Obviously there is no way to get over Camp Kesem, but since I have to wait so long to go back, and someday there will be a time that I don’t get to be the leader of arts and crafts all week, I know that I have to keep what I love about Kesem alive for myself.

At Camp Kesem there is a feeling. A feeling of love, respect, compassion, fun, awe, and togetherness. It’s that feeling that makes my heart ache when I think of how long it is until I get to go to camp again, but it’s also the feeling that makes it so hard to stop smiling.

I think it’s important to realize that everyone has this feeling within them, but I know that for me it took Camp Kesem to wake it up. Now that it’s been shaken awake, I will never let it go away, and I am ready to spread it to as many people as possible.

The name of this feeling?
I call it magic.