Girl Scout Gratitude

My mother made me go to Girl Scout meetings. For many of the years I was a Girl Scout, she was a Girl Scout leader, which made meetings doubly uncomfortable - especially when she was blowing that ridiculous whistle that hung around her neck. Being a resistor by nature and a bit of a loner, I predictably balked at being forced to be a Girl Scout. The uniforms were ugly. We made useless things like the umbrella stand devised of large coffee cans stacked together and wrapped in vomitous yellow polyester rope that any umbrella would be embarrassed to be caught dead in. Hand-stitched skirts for our sewing badge project, which the dead wouldn't be caught dead in. Tie tacks with bright copper pennies for Father's Day gifts, which no tie-wearing father would be caught dead in. Octopi made from smelly old pantyhose that were meant to be cute and cuddly, but really were not - and no one wants to be caught dead cuddling smelly old pantyhose.

On the emotional level, meetings were just plain miserable. I was definitely not a member of the popular clique, nor were my other scout "friends". Our bond of friendship was our unenviable fate of being daughters of leaders. No one wanted us in their group because they were sure we'd divulge all their secrets to our mothers. We were social outcasts.

As a group, we worked together on earning many of our badges, whether we had a personal interest in the subject or not. I can still recall the feeling of utter despair I felt when I scanned the booklet that was distributed to us when we worked on health, beauty, and hygiene. The illustrations depicted a long-legged, long-nailed, impeccably coiffed, very thin and beautiful twenty-something-year-old woman. The effect this had on my eleven-year-old self struggling with being told by my mother that I was too fat, biting my nails to the quick, and experiencing perpetually greasy hair was devastating. I know now that the little beauty booklet we received was meant to motivate us, but at the time it undermined what little self-esteem I did have. I've finally accepted that I will never be tall, thin, long-legged, and glamorously beautiful, but it will forever feel like the elusive Girl Scout Grail, the goal I was supposed to reach, but could not. I did finally stop the nail biting habit, but replaced it soon after with a cigarette habit, which was even harder to quit. The greasy hair resolved itself with the passage of time, which moves sooo slowly when you are just eleven years old. The beauty booklet waxed rhapsodic over the lucky bearer of a widow's peak, which it deemed a chief beauty asset. I remember all the girls in the troop pushing back bangs and turning to each other to see who the lucky ones among us were. To this day, whenever I look in the mirror, I am comforted to see what I imagine is a most beautiful widow's peak - although I suspect it may be a receding hairline or a mild cowlick.

If not for the torture of being a Girl Scout during the school year, I would never have known the complete and total joy of Girl Scout camp for two weeks every August. Every August I rode a bus from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan to upstate New York, escaping the heat, cement, foul air, and droning traffic of Queens. Trees, mountains, big fat blueberries by the lake, and the unique musty smell of the lake rising up as my canoe sliced silently through the water. Being able to actually see the night sky, birds, animals, plants, nature. Cool counselors with names like Moose, Pixie, and Green who encouraged us to be ourselves and knew endless songs to play on the guitar by the campfire at night.

Campfires! Fires are so ingrained in our ancestral heritage as human beings on this planet, yet so few of us living a modern life have the opportunity to benefit from the healing power of a fire circle. I'm sure many people have never built, lit, fed, sat and gazed into a fire at all. Every fire I've had has felt like a homecoming to me. A little voice inside me sighs and says, "Ah, this is what's been missing!" I find myself to be slightly on edge when I know I am living in a setting that does not permit open outdoor fires.

Because of Girl Scout camp, I learned about endangered plants and animals, I learned how to properly use a knife and an axe. How to canoe. How to build a platform between three saplings without using a hammer or a nail. How to cook over an open fire and wash my clothes without a machine. How to get thrown from a horse and get back on. How to sprain an ankle and finish the hike. I have a vast repertoire of silly and obscure songs that come in handy on long car rides and a fair knowledge of handy dandy knots, including the morbidly fascinating hangman's noose. I have a memory file stored full of amazing firsts - like the first whiff I ever had of fresh cedarwood, the first time I ate a tart apple with sharp cheese on a cracker, the first time I stayed awake all night watching heat lightning light up a mountain peak, the first time I navigated white water in a canoe, and the first time I saw an eagle in the sky above me. I feel connected to the earth because of Girl Scout camp.

In retrospect, I can say I am truly grateful that I was forced to be a Girl Scout. The nine months of Girl Scout "dues" I paid yearly to be able to have those two weeks of freedom and discovery each summer were truly insignificant compared to the overall gain I've netted.

My son is in his third year of Boy Scouts. Unlike me, he is a joiner and a team player. I don't have to force him to be a Scout, but sometimes I have to force myself to be a good Scout mom. This weekend, we'll be attending a large outdoor camping event and I know he'll have a blast and remember it all his life. Soon he'll be old enough for sleep-away camp and I think he'll want to go. I'm still a resistor at heart - grumbling about following the Handbook, grumbling to myself about the uniform, grumbling about selling popcorn - but my heart knows it's worth it and I am able to shift my focus from grumble to gratitude.