For dinner, Lyla eats 1 roll, 2 brownies, 0 pieces of chicken, 0 vegetables, and 67 tater tots. Since none of the dads are actually in charge of their daughters here, this nutritional imbalance goes unchallenged. The girls are all happy but exhausted. Al-Vah has fallen asleep on her plate.
After dinner, a flag ceremony, and a truly unfortunate singalong, the trading post opens, and Lyla makes a bee-line for it faster than a bee making a line to something. I follow because I have the money. She selects a woodland color-by-number and a stuffed raccoon for Rowan.
In the bunk room while she colors, we await the evening campfire, still an hour away. More girls file in, their dads following. Lyla abandons the color-by-number, and the girls collectively get a second wind. They rile each other up, shrieking and whooping. Then they run out of the room in a herd, and the other dads and I listen as they invent a game with inexplicable rules. It sounds roughly like a Pentecostal revival.
Lyla takes a six-second break from the game to inform me that, while she will not be attending the campfire, I am nevertheless permitted to bring her back a S'more. This has become like a ritual for us. She says she doesn't want to do something (such as ride horses, shoot arrows, and attend campfires), but I pep-talk her until she grudgingly reconsiders, and then she loves it and files it away into her ironclad memory of fun new things. Except for singalongs: everyone has limits.
Lyla leaves and comes back: "Daddy, someone just put a phone in one of the toilets." Of course someone did.
Later, we do make S'mores, but Lyla and I return to the bunk room ahead of the masses so that we can FaceTime with Julie. Another girl hears Julie's voice and joins us, chats with Julie about this and that; her name is Mamie, and her dad's in the shower. Had the other girls not been outside still chowing down on S'mores, they would have all gathered around to talk to Julie too. In the absence of your actual mother, any mother will do.
The place becomes a zoo again before long. Lyla gallops around with the herd, whipping ribbons and coming *this* close to putting out eyeballs. Slowly and one by one, the girls get plucked out of the herd by their dads and prepared for bed. While other girls cry and protest, Lyla puts on pajamas without complaint and returns to her color-by-number.
In the dimness of the following morning, Father's Day, Lyla is up in her bunk again, coloring and coloring. Some unnamed friend has joined her, and below on my bunk I listen to them chat about school, brothers, and their favorite everythings. Elsewhere, bags get packed, hair gets brushed, and good food gets dreamed about. Lyla can be crazy and loud, but she is often quiet, and it is her quietness that has attracted this new friend. I think to myself, she's going to have a fulfilling life.
In awhile, we'll go help set up breakfast; Lyla has volunteered us again. We'll not-sing some more songs, and we'll say awkward goodbyes to Al-Vah, Mamie, and the others whose names escape me. The dads will grimace pleasantly at each other, and we'll all go home. And next June, without doubt, we'll come back and do it again.
No comments:
Post a Comment