Scissors

On Tuesday morning, I woke up to the sound of Madison screaming, “it’s time for you to be a gentle military man!” We had lost cabin cleaning the day before, so Madison had taken it upon herself to make sure we cleaned well enough for the Queen of England to eat off our floor. During lunch, my cocounselor complained that his arthritis was flaring up, so Maggie told the other campers that Dakota couldn’t sit down because his “at-chee-tus” was bothering him. At night, the fire in Madison’s dark eyes kindled wildly. She’d put on a pair of socks and convince her cabin mates to “ice skate” around the room with her. While her friends were in the shower, she would sit outside on the sink and ask them questions about their life or favorite subject in school. During breakfast on Wednesday, I overheard Madison say, “In conclusion, Thanos wasn’t a bad guy in The Avengers movie, but situationally, he was a bad guy.” Thursday afternoon, we took our creek hike. This activity looks just like it sounds. You splatter paint on one another, then jump in a gentle, murmuring stream and hike. Even though the July temperatures ranged from ninety-five to one hundred, you were cold, wet, and surrounded by enough snakes to give Indiana Jones a run for his money—a perfect event when handling the molding minds of impressionable fourth-graders. I’ve never liked my hair. It’s the wrong color, and it’s frizzy when it rains, but against my will, Madison found it beautiful. On Monday, she went around telling everyone about her “noodle” counselor, referring to my mindless curls. Madison was blonde, nine years old, and shorter than all the other girls in my cabin, but somehow scrappier than any other elementary schooler I had ever met. It wasn’t the first time I had been given a camper with an unusual personality, but Madison woke up every morning ready to give the universe a hard time. During the daily services, she’d poke at my shoulder and whisper—referring to the resident pastor—things like, “that woman is wearing old man pants!” And during rest time, she drew little hearts and “poop emojis” on my forehead while I was visiting Imagination in my dreams.

Halfway through the hike, Madison dramatically turned to me with tears in her eyes and whispered, “why am I so different?” As someone who’d struggled with the same thought, I broke down with her, and the camp photographer found us both sobbing, holding one another in the middle of the creek.

The other counselor in my cabin told me some of her girls had called Madison “weird” the day before, which opened my eyes to Madison’s question and allowed our cabin to have a meeting on the dangers of bullying and how to treat others with respect during rest time. Madison cried the entire assembly, but after it was all over, she sat by me and whispered that the mean girls had apologized and asked for her forgiveness. Madison gave it to them willingly, without condition. Later that night, we went on our campout, and while we were waiting for our potatoes and chicken to cook thoroughly on the fire, Madison rewrote the entire song “Reckless Love” and entitled it “Simba Is Our Friend.” Her obsession with my stuffed animal Simba, a character from The Lion King, was not surprising, as every camper in my charge fell in love with the plushie I carried around as our “mascot” during the week, but she was personally determined to bring the animal to life. After teaching her song to the rest of our campers, they performed it in the field beside our campsite, with the lyrics: “Oh, he’s soft and fluffy, comfort buddy, Simba is our friend. Oh, and we do wish he was alive,

Instead of just pretend. We didn’t earn him, we don’t deserve him, but he loves us all the same, Oh, he’s soft and fluffy, comfort buddy, Simba is our friend.” That same night, Madison and Carson, the most athletic boy in our group, tried to burn Simba in the campfire, so I’m unsure how deeply rooted her loyalty really was. When we were attempting to sleep in our wooden shelter, Madison sat up in her sleeping bag and announced, “this forest has too many sticks,” which prompted an hour-long discussion between my girls about the properties of the forest and the sticks within. Friday, Madison invented an entire world centered around a chicken, who she named Adam, and proceeded to embody her character for the rest of the day. But on the last day of camp, while we were waiting for chapel to start, my beloved girl took her safety scissors, initially intended for colorful bracelet-making activities, and sliced off most of my nearly waistlength hair. I was unprepared for such a drastic haircut, but, in the moment, there was nothing I could do. I put her scissors in my backpack, and we went to chapel as if nothing had happened, leaving my shorn hair on the steps of the chapel’s Path of Silence.

I asked Madison two minutes before she left the camp to go home why she had cut my hair, and her answer is the reason I write children’s literature today. She solemnly answered, “at the beginning of the week, you told me that you loved me. People say that to me every day at school and stuff, but nobody ever means it. When I cut your hair, you didn’t get mad. That’s how I know you really love me.” We sat on the floor hugging and sobbing, waiting for her mother to pick her up. After gathering her things, she grabbed my wrist and said, “Promise me you’ll be back next year.” I promised her I would try, unaware that afternoon would be my last day as a camp counselor—forever. When she was gone, I went into my backroom and chopped off the rest of my uneven hair with the same scissors that had caused the makeover. I couldn’t help but laugh at my chinlength locks, as I hadn’t styled short hair in a long time, and the learning curve that followed was a unique experience of its own. Still, the individual garden that Madison had planted was already beginning to produce lyrical flowers that would later become my first novel. I don’t know if I’ll ever see Madison again, at least in this life, but I am positive that wherever she is today, she’s brightening someone’s morning with a smile and a captivating song.