The Spaces In Between

This summer I had the amazing opportunity to be a counselor and Art Activity Head at Camp Aranu’tiq for three weeks in June/July, and for a long weekend at the end of August. Camp is truly a magical place: 116 acres on a lake, surrounded by mountains, and there is no place I would rather be than in the New Hampshire woods with other queer and trans adults nurturing the growth of young trans and gender-creative kids.

Two of my favorite stories from this year come from interactions I had with two of the youngest campers during family weekend in August. (These stories are shared with the kids and parents’ permission.)

Story One: 

Each day in the Arts and Crafts building I organized several activities that kids could choose from, and set out the materials for different projects on various tables around the room. Kids could choose from bracelet making, collaging, paper marbling, rock-painting, fancy yarn-hair braid-making, and glue-gun/Popsicle stick projects, just to name a few.

On the first morning of camp, one of the 6 year-olds came over to me and said, “Can I look in your closet?” meaning the big supply closet which has a big sign on it saying “Staff Only.”

“Why do you want to look in there?” I asked, and he explained that he didn’t want to do any of the activities that were laid out on the tables and wanted to see what else was in the closet.

“I don’t have much else in here, most of the art supplies are on the tables already,” I told him, “But you can take a look.”

I opened the door and he peered inside. After looking for a few seconds he said, “Um do you have any sciencey stuff?”

“What do you mean?” I said, wondering what he imagined as “science.”

“Like potions and stuff. I just want to make a sticky mess! ”

I was delighted at his definition of science being a sticky mess, and his comment made me look at the supplies in a new way; I had corn starch in the closet from making slime in the summer, and while I was definitely not going to make slime with 5 and 6 year olds, I thought aha, we can make ooobleck, that’s sticky and sciencey!

The kids loved it! We added different colors with paint, which made beautiful marbled swirls in the oobleck, and had a great conversation about solids and liquids, and non-newtonian fluids (which is what oobleck is). Yay, science!

As the kids were messing around with the ooblek, I thought, oh, we can also make clay! (Glue and corn-starch and paint for color = clay). The clay-making was definitely very messy and sticky, as it involved a lot of glue, but the kids loved it, and asked to do it several times over the weekend.

I am very glad that this kiddo asked me for some different options when he didn’t find what he wanted to do already out on the tables, and his idea spawned many hours of fun over the course of the weekend.

Clay frog whose maker did not return to Arts and Crafts at the end of the weekend to pick it up, so I brought it home with me.

Story Two: 

One of the things that I love about Camp Aranu’tiq is watching the children express themselves and their genders freely and without shame. Everyone wears name-tags, which include pronouns, and we all do our best to not make assumptions about a person’s gender or pronouns based on their gender expression and/or name. Family weekend can be quite educational for parents who are new to the community, and who are learning through their child(ren) and the folks around them to ask for pronouns along with names. And it can be an educational, insightful experience for all of us, including trans and queer adults, to listen as children teach us about their gender, sometimes creating new words to name their unique experiences, sometimes reminding us that gender can be fluid, and always challenging us to be better mentors/care-givers of their lives.

One of my favorite kids at camp was a 5.5 year old–who I will call M. for the purpose of this blog. This kiddo spent a lot of time in the art room, enthusiastically painting rocks and stamping paper and making clay.  I especially liked the collection of brown rocks that they thickly smeared with brown paint, among the many things that they made over the course of the weekend.

(This brown rock reminded me of the work of a young artist I had in A/C over the summer who carefully painted a brown stick brown. That artist also tried to take a stick completely covered and dripping with bright blue paint back to their cabin, but thankfully I stopped them before they made it too far!).

Sometimes M. was accompanied by a parent and a baby sibling, who loved to climb in and out of the empty cabinets under the counters, and scribble everywhere with markers. Usually M. ended up shirt-less due to the above mentioned enthusiastic rock-painting, and they were a friendly-chatterbox, eager to explore new art activities, and meet new people. They didn’t always remember my name, and would call out across the room, “ummmm, HELLO??” when they wanted to get my attention.

One day M. was sitting next to one of the other parents, chatting away about art and drawing and stamps and who knows what else, and this parent assumed a pronoun for M. and then stopped herself, and asked M. what pronouns they used or what their gender identity was.  M. cheerfully replied, “I am a they-bear, and I use they/them/theirs.” It was adorable! I mentioned this to their parent later in the day, and their parent said that M. has identified as a they-bear since around age three, and that M. came up with the term themself.

They are so, so cute, and it was a great example of how some children are coming up with their own words and terms to explain who they are. I feel incredibly lucky to have gotten to spend time with M. and the little scientist from story one, and all of the other young, confident kids at Camp, and their supportive, loving families. These kids and their grown-ups are changing the world.