SEVEN

AT REST HOUR THE NEXT day, I write back to Kaylan.

Dear Kaylan,

I’m so glad you got to meet everyone on visiting day! You got to experience the magic of Camp Silver for a day. Isn’t it the best? It literally feels like the happiest place in the whole world to me. Better than Disney World.

And guess what? Golfy likes me! Zoe and Alice found out. I am soooo excited. I’ll keep you posted.

Did I tell you they have this crazy dessert here? It’s like pudding, but it’s called mung, and even if you turn the whole bowl upside down, the mung stays in the bowl. It doesn’t fall out! How insane is that? I don’t even know how it works. It’s delicious, too.

And guess what? The other day it rained all day so we got to stay in the bunk and just hang out. And then we put on bathing suits and brought out our shampoo and body wash and we showered outside! It was the best. So, so funny. All the girls here shave their legs. I’m so glad we started shaving before the summer. It would have been weird otherwise. Did June’s mom let her start shaving yet? She’s not super hairy, but still . . .

BTW—haven’t gotten the big P again. But I’m prepared.

Anyway, I miss you! Can’t wait to show you all of my doodles.

LOVE YOU FOREVER, Ari

After rest hour, I’m in my Mindfulness elective, and I’m completely doing it wrong. I mean, I guess the whole point of Mindfulness is to be able to feel your feelings a little more and accept that you can’t control them. Just feel them and let them move along.

I don’t really know. I’m still learning.

“We want to let our thoughts have their space in our mind, and then allow them to flutter away, like a little bird,” the counselor in charge says to the group. “We need to think about how we relate to our thoughts and then acknowledge when they become distracting to us.”

This counselor’s real name is Barack, so naturally his camp nickname is Pres. He reminds us all the time that he had his name before Barack Obama was president, though. “And we’re focusing on our breathing,” he reminds us. “Breathe in. Breathe out.”

I try this, but my mind still wanders. It wanders to Golfy, and to my bat mitzvah, and to Kaylan and the list, and then the pink tablecloths, and then to wondering what the lunch table girls will think about Israeli dancing at the party.

“Spend a moment thinking about how the floor feels underneath you,” Pres says. “Does your body feel heavy against the floor? Really feel the weight of your presence in this space.”

I’m able to do every instruction he gives us, and for a moment my mind is on that thing, but then it wanders away again like a toddler at the playground.

We all have so many thoughts going through our minds at the same time; it seems impossible to focus on one thing for more than a few seconds.

“Now think about how it smells in here,” Pres instructs. “Really breathe in, take in the aroma of this space, and then release your breath.”

I look around the room—none of my friends are in this elective, and at first I was annoyed that I was separated from them and that I got put into an elective I didn’t even really want to do.

But right now it feels calm and peaceful to sort of be on my own. And mindfulness is actually more interesting than I thought it would be.

“Now close your eyes for a moment,” Pres tells us. “Feel the weight of your eyelids. Open them. Close them.” He pauses. “When we are at camp, so much is happening around us at all times. We love this place. We want to take it all in. We want to make sure we take the time to be mindful here, to notice our beautiful surroundings, to really feel as if we are part of this place.”

As he talks, I think about Kaylan’s most recent letter and something dawns on me.

Everyone (especially Kaylan) thinks of me as chill, relaxed, free-spirit Ari. And I am, or at least I appear to be. I mean, nothing ever feels like that big of a deal to me—that’s true. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about stuff. My mind isn’t really super chill—it’s always wandering off in a million directions. Not necessarily bad directions, but it is moving all over the place.

Maybe if I keep working on this, my mind can be chill, too.