Can he do that?

This past weekend, I worked a respite weekend at camp. Respite is an opportunity for families and care givers with special needs to bring their loved one to camp for a weekend. The purpose is two fold: to help the campers have a fun weekend away from home and for the care givers to receive a much needed rest from providing 24 hour care for their loved one with special needs. Even just having campers here for 40 hours, I was able to take a lesson anyway. That's the beauty of this kind of work. Always something to learn. :) This weekend's lesson was on ability.

I had the opportunity to work pretty closely with a young man with severe Cerebral Palsy. He was pretty fantastic. I'm not going to lie. He had a great sense of humor. He was also one of those people that when you were on the receiving end of a smile or a laugh, you feel that you must have done something pretty special to earn ti so it makes you feel pretty wonderful. There was a group of  nursing students from a nearby university volunteering. Each of them was assigned a camper to work with one on one while the other camp counselor and I were there to help out as needed. I'm not sure of this volunteer's experience in working with people with special needs, but I was pretty surprised when she asked me several times at activities throughout the weekend, "Can he do that?" I thought it was an odd question to ask of a person with special needs at a camp for people with special needs. I'm sure this is a question people ask (be it in their heads or out loud) about this young man all of the time. But the beauty of it is, he can do that here. He can do whatever he wants here. We will do our absolute best to make it work or die trying. He lives in a world that I'm sure doesn't always accommodate to him, but luckily camp isn't that world. Did you know there was such a thing as adaptive golf clubs? And that there are countless art projects that can be adapted for people with special needs? It's all really quite amazing.

I also found it odd that when our dear camper left, the volunteer said to him, "It was a pleasure to take care of you this weekend." Sure, assisting with basic personal needs comes with the territory but was that our primary job here? I felt that my primary goal was to help him participate in the activities that he may not be able to do otherwise and to help him have a positive experience while he was here. In my head, providing the personal care was not our primary goal this weekend. In his file, it said he loved camp and loved being here so I wanted to keep it that way. I earned several of those smiles along the way, so I'm hoping that mission was accomplished.

This had me thinking about my own abilities. I can't even tell you how many times I've looked at something of which I'm perfectly capable and said, "I can't do it." I know I've taken for granted the fact that I can do something, but something inside me be it fear or nerves or what have you has decided that I can't when in reality that's really not the case. There's a few things in my life where I let the "I can't" get the best of me and quit on some things that I know in hindsight that I could have done. I don't believe in regret because it's those choices that led me to where I am today, but if I had it to do differently, I probably would have done it...differently.

Most recently, during our staff training, we went caving. Now for those of you that have never been caving, it's really quite an experience. We shimmied through a cave not more than a few feet high and a few feet wide for Lord knows how many feet by the light of a flashlight to get to an open space at the back in order to sit down and do some team building activities. I was very anxious about it the day before, but decided that I would try it. I was still pretty nervous going in , but the person behind me was even more so. She decided to back out of the cave pretty early, but I kept going. The element of the unknown soon got the best of me and I, too, decided to turn around about halfway in and head back. Part of me is okay with this decision, but part of me regrets not completing the challenge. After all, it's not that I can't. I can. I'm perfectly capable. Guys who weight 150 pounds more than I do and that are a foot taller have made it through this cave so I really have no excuse. That goes for most things, really, and is the lesson I'm glad I was able to take away from this weekend. I'm hoping I'll have the chance to go back and try my hand at the cave again. Next time, I will bring extra batteries for my headlamp in order to provide some additional peace of mind. :)

An example of ability that makes me come out on top is when our group climbed the "Angle Dangle" during our staff training. The Angle Dangle is this ropes course element comprised of 4x4s at wonky angles attached by cables on each side, like some kind of crazy ladder. The "rungs" were about as far apart as I am tall, so it was a bit challenging and there were times when I didn't think I would physically be able to do reach the next beam and pull myself up, but somehow, I did it. It took awhile and I had lots of bumps and bruises to show for it, but I proved to myself that I could do it. The physical ability level was there. It just took my brain awhile to realize it. So in the future when the thought "I can't" starts to creep it's way in, all I have to picture is that volunteer asking, "Can he do that?" and then remember the smile on the camper's face when he did do it. I only hope I can be as cool as him some day.