My cheeks are damp with tears. Through foggy eyes I see a best friend perched in his usual position on top of two wheels. His face is shrouded by a baseball cap and his arms are holding him in place on the ramp to my van. I don’t want to leave. This has been my home for three weeks, and in many ways it has been more of a home than my own home town has ever been. For there is no one where I am from whose eyes I could look into in my present state.

The tears keep coming and I keep staring into that boyish face. The face knows my pain, and the gentle grin somehow soothes it. There are no awkward moves to look away and no feeble attempts to shift attention elsewhere. What is occurring between my puffy eyes and his only happens in the most mature of friendships. This is a genuine connection. A connection which is completely new to me.

The last of my three weeks at Shake-A-Leg was the one that tied the knot. We were a family that last week, and all of a sudden I was on a par with everybody else. I was no longer somebody else’s responsibility. Instead, we were all our own responsibilities. There were ten of us, plus and minus a few stragglers. I was one of two people who had asked to stay a week after teen camp to help out with kids’ camp. Many of the others were nursing students who had worked at Shake all summer. When we weren’t playing with the kids, we were bonding. There was a cook among us, so most nights when dinner time rolled around, we sat down to a gourmet dinner. The nights we weren’t at home feasting, we were at some waterfront café enjoying the sailboats in Newport’s harbors.

I had stayed the extra week at Shake for a reason. Kids’ camp began at ten o’clock each morning, and the kids usually began showing up around nine thirty. There were nine kids total, and three times as many thirteen-year-old volunteers. Many of the kids were little maniacs in electric wheelchairs. Most of them were very cute, and they all had so much energy. All of a sudden, I was supposed to be the role model. My first two weeks at Shake, other people were role models for me. We organized group games, most of which involved water guns, to keep the kids entertained. McDonald’s delivered lunch to the kids every day, and the staff usually ordered other junk food from local take-out restaurants. (I consumed large quantities of pizza and Chinese food during my three weeks at Shake.) The kids were gone by three in the afternoon.

When the kids left, I was on my own. Sometimes I would stroll down to Bellvue Avenue to pick up necessities at the Stop’n Shop, and sometimes I’d wheel with some friends down the road to Cliffwalk and watch sailboats and windsurfers ride the Atlantic for awhile. The freedom and total independence I had then was amazing. I have never felt so liberated and utterly grown up. At home, I can’t even go downtown without getting a ride from some one. In Newport, everything I needed was just a five minute wheel away. Even though many of the shops and stores in Newport weren’t wheelchair accessible, I still felt more independent living there than I do living in Vermont.

During teen camp, however, I was on a slightly shorter leash. Teen camp was very structured: up at seven; therapies from nine to eleven; a group activity from eleven to twelve; lunch from noon to two; more therapies from two to three; a recreational activity from three to five or six; dinner at six. There were many kinds of therapies, and each one was an hour long. On Mondays I had Strength and Conditioning with Paul Lonczak (who will work you until you die) from nine to ten, and physical therapy with Kristy and Ashley from ten to eleven. On other days I had occupational therapy with Brenda, who actually came up with a realistic way for me to feed myself; massage with Bob, the long-haired, aging hippie who lives in Florida and used to raise wolves; Reiki with Sue who always put me to sleep. I perfected an independent transfer from my chair to my bed and back into my chair in physical therapy, and learned countless other better ways to perform daily routines. The hard part comes now. I have to focus on breaking free of my old systems and routines at home which don’t give me the greatest amount of independence I am capable of. This is extremely hard to do because the easiest and quickest way to do something often seems like the best way. However, this is not always true, especially in my situation. Realizing this, and making the people closest to me realize it as well will be a bigger job than just being independent could ever be.

Teen camp had a specific goal to teach the participants how to be as independent as possible in their lives. It was structured extremely well for teenagers. This was my third year at teen camp, and each year I have gotten a lot more out of it. The week I spent at kids’ camp, however, gave me a whole new meaning to the term ‘independence’. I had no personal care attendants or aids that week. I was just a friend living among friends. When I needed help, I asked for it. When somebody else needed help they asked for it. I was no one’s boss and no one worked for me. I was living on my own for the very first time, and the power that gave me over my life was priceless.

I am sad. But the tears rolling down my face are not dedicated to any one person, nor do they exist solely because I am leaving the strongest friendships I have ever known. I am addicted to the intensity of life that this place provides me with. I am still sitting in this parking lot, staring at this face I know so well through foggy eyes, and already I miss the total independence, stunning experiences, and tremendous relationships more than I have missed anything in my life. I am much stronger now with this pitiful face than I was three weeks ago sitting in this same spot with a drier face. The things I have learned both about myself and my abilities during the past three weeks have made me a more mature individual. And this maturity will stick with me for the rest of my life.