In approximately an hour and forty minutes, my summer internship will end. Perhaps it's technically already over. The closing banquet was tonight. Jokes were made, laughs were exchanged, pictures were reminisced over, and words pooled about our seats, the inadequate vessels of our memories of the last few months. Emotions were spiffed up, scrubbed behind the ears and stuffed into tight shoes, then trotted out to smile nicely and say endearing things about each other. The ceremony ended, and the interns took one last night ride on the cheese bus. Thus it ended, and each returned to his own host family to prepare for move out day tomorrow. As I returned to the room that has been my sanctum for the last ten weeks, I began to feel restless. I hate transition time; I can't stand the feeling of having one foot in this world and the other in the next. When I moved out of my dorm this past spring, my friends and I solved this problem by staying out the whole night-- playing sweet tea-pong, going for crepes at three in the morning, climbing the fence into a construction site and watching the sun rise from the dry basin of a recently renovated fountain. We returned to the dorm in time for me to catch an hour and a half of sleep before getting up to meet my parents and pack everything I owned into the car. But this transition is not like that transition. This time I am moving, not from the university to which I will return in a few weeks, but from a job that has challenged me more than I have ever been challenged before. These past weeks have submerged me in an experience so intense that I find it difficult to suddenly step out of it completely. It's as though I were on a train hurtling at top speed, which abruptly stopped. Ride over. Get off. And so tonight I tried to put that restless, emotional energy to use. I began to pack frenetically. I have all morning tomorrow to move my things to the West End, but I shoved belongings into bags as though I were a Gypsy, about to disappear with all my earthly possessions into the torrid summer night. Now my packing is essentially complete. There are a few little things lying around (one sock flops listlessly on the floor, a refugee abandoned by his fellows), and the side table is still covered in books, my constant companions. I look at the stack and have to chuckle at my own naivete, bringing that much reading material to an internship like this. I guess I really thought I would have time to loaf around and read. Clearly I didn't know what I was getting myself into. And so now I force myself to try and debrief. I let memories of day camp and SB2Dub wash over me, and try to sift through, to draw out something coherent. I close my eyes and put myself back into Harambee, or assembly-- the time each morning during which we danced and performed skits. I feel that energy level, feel little Ira's hot breath as he screams "ICE CREAM AND CAKE DO THE ICE CREAM AND CAKE" directly into my cochlea. I mentally watch Adam Burgess get pied in the face, and smile maliciously at the thought of how his beard will smell several hours from now. I think about the Crunk Crickets. I see each Cricket bounce into the room, consider each diverse personality. That, I think, has been the best part of this summer: the relationships I was able to make with each kid in day camp. This past week six of the interns accompanied thirty-odd day campers to SB2Dub, a Christian sports camp in Pennsylvania. Early in the week each camper's counselor had time to come to the interns and ask about the students. The idea was that we could briefly tell them about each kid-- what to expect, any relevant background information that might help them with discipline problems, that sort of thing. I realized as each name was brought up that there was no way I could sum up that student in only a few sentences. There was so much to try and convey: personality, moods, stories, faults alongside strengths. I didn't think I was able to do any of our campers justice in the few moments we had. And that's a beautiful thing. Consider me during the first day of tutoring. There I stand, awkward and bewildered, in a surging sea of children who I don't know and whose names I am rapidly forgetting. Each face swims past, blending with the faces on either side in the dull roar of elementary school prattle. It seems unbelievable that a few short months later, each student is as a fingerprint, unique and unmistakable. So where does that leave me now? I have formed these relationships with the kids I've been with all summer. That's great, and I'm thrilled that I had that opportunity. But now I'm leaving. I don't go to the University of Richmond; I can't return every week for tutoring. Sure, I can come back when I'm home over winter break, but that's hardly the way to sustain real relationships. So has this been, in essence, wasted love? Am I becoming just another adult who spends a little bit of time in these kids' lives and then leaves? Am I maybe doing more harm than I am good? Those are hard questions to answer, and it is for the sake of avoiding such thoughts that I threw myself so eagerly into the busy work of packing. But as I force myself to reconcile with my doubts, I am sure of one thing. God led me to be here this summer. He was with the work that happened at day camp. He used this internship to make me stop everything else that I was doing and draw closer to Him. And God will not let this love, which sprang from His heart, be wasted love. "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?' And I said, 'Here am I. Send me!'" ~Isaiah 6:8
