| Aug. 16, 2003
Special summer camp reunites brother and sisters split by
foster care By REBECCA COOK
Associated Press Writer
GYPSUM, Colo. (AP) _ A little boy with dark circles under his eyes
steps off the bus alone, slouching uncertainly into his first day of
summer camp in a faded Harry Potter T-shirt.
As other children hug and chase each other around the lawn, he drifts to
the fringe of the crowd, poking a stick into the crevices of a low rock
wall.
He's
9 years old, skinny and quiet. His name tag says Devin, but here he'll
be called D.J.
It's
a nickname he hasn't heard in a long time.
The
"J" stands for his middle name, known only by his family. Years ago, the
state took Devin and his sisters away from their abusive parents and put
them into separate foster homes. Devin was adopted by a family in
Washington state, while his two sisters moved several states away with
their adoptive mother.
They
haven't seen each other in about a year. The separation hit Devin
especially hard. On his camp application, his adoptive mom wrote: "His
Gameboy is his friend."
But
here, Devin will have two real friends: his sisters are at Camp To
Belong, too.
Camp
To Belong reunites siblings who have been separated in the foster care
system, giving them a chance to play, laugh, share secrets and even
bicker like brothers and sisters again.
On
the surface, it's like any other camp: swimming and horseback riding,
silly songs and family-style meals, campfires and s'mores. At Camp To
Belong, though, every activity is designed to bring brothers and sisters
closer together.
It
lasts only four days - not nearly long enough to heal the damage done by
what, for some campers, has been a lifetime of hurt and disappointment.
But the camp founder believes siblings can provide a refuge of love and
stability for foster kids who live in a world where both can be cruelly
scarce.
On
this first night, some brothers and sisters cling to each other like
long-lost soul mates. Others sit together awkwardly like strangers on a
bus, stealing glances when they think the other isn't looking.
Devin
sits across from his sisters and quietly eats his spaghetti and
meatballs in the rustic dining hall, the bare bulbs on wagon-wheel
chandeliers casting a warm yellow glow.
His
thoughts wander outside, where the sky is fading from sapphire blue to
deep plum. He left his flashlight in his suitcase, which is already up
at his cabin. In the growing darkness, the gentle hill that separates
the dining hall from the boys' cabins becomes in Devin's mind a
treacherous mountain infested with rattlesnakes.
"I
think I should go get my flashlight," he tells one camp counselor, and
then another.
His
brow furrowed, Devin wants to know just where his cabin is, who will
take him there, and when exactly he will be reunited with his
flashlight.
Finally, a kindly counselor loans Devin a flashlight. Devin flicks it on
and off a dozen times, and then walks over to the window, where he
shines the flashlight through the ripped screen.
In a
buzzing mass, the 85 campers pour out of the dining hall toward a
campfire where Devin joins his sisters.
"Ma'am?" 12-year-old Chloe calls commandingly to a woman doling out
s'mores ingredients. "Ma'am with the marshmallows!" She secures
marshmallows for herself, 10-year-old Sharee and Devin, and turns back
to the fire.
(Chloe and Sharee are middle names the girls chose for themselves when
they were adopted several years ago; their mother asked that their first
names not be used because she worries the girls' biological parents
might try to track them down. Devin is their brother's first name. Their
last names are being withheld to protect their privacy.)
Camp
director and founder Lynn Price welcomes everyone to western Colorado,
explaining the concept of Camp To Belong to the kids, some of whom have
only a vague idea why they're here. One girl thought camp was a
punishment. The campers murmur in surprise when Price, a TV executive
turned motivational speaker, outs herself as a former foster child. She
and her sister Andi Andree - the ma'am with the marshmallows - were
separated as children and didn't become close until they were adults.
"We
want to give you what we never had," Price says.
But
now, after a long day of travel, it's time to sleep. As the campfire
breaks up, kids scramble to find their newly assigned counselors.
"West
Mountain, over here!" bellows Brad, a counselor for the youngest boys'
cabin. Devin leaps to his feet, clutching his flashlight. His guided
tour departs through the dark, unfamiliar landscape.
But a
moment later he breaks away from the pack and runs back to Chloe and
Sharee, still standing by the fire.
Silently, Devin hugs both his sisters goodnight. They clutch him for a
moment, his glimmer of affection as fleeting as the sparks jumping from
the dying fire.
Then
he turns to leave, his lone flashlight wavering in the darkness.
---
Mist
rises the next morning from the horse pasture that separates the boys'
cabins in the woods from the barn-like dining hall. Girls reach the hall
by a rocky trail up from Sweetwater Creek, where their cabins line up
along the rushing water.
At
breakfast, kids take in the new faces, including their own siblings'.
There's 18-year-old Robert from Oklahoma, tired and sullen, who flaunts
his baggy clothes and intricately braided hair as the armor of his
street cred. He will amaze his sisters on the second night of camp by
telling them, in front of everyone, how much he loves them.
There's 10-year-old Glen from Colorado Springs, his blond hair sticking
out in every direction. When he and his constantly bickering older
brother and sister share birthday cupcakes on the third night of camp,
he will lick the candles clean and carefully save them to take home.
And
then there are Chloe and Devin, who look alike, with their round, rosy
cheeks and button noses. She's as strong and solid as her little sister,
Sharee, is wispy and ethereal. Sharee and Devin, closer in age, share a
dreamy nature. All three have a sprinkling of summer freckles over their
noses.
They
also share a series of small, pale scars, where their biological parents
burned them with cigarettes. The state took them away from their parents
six years ago. Chloe says she doesn't remember anything from before
then. Sharee remembers one happy time when their father spun them around
in the air, but that's it. Devin says he was too young to remember
anything.
Devin
and Sharee don't know why the state put them in different foster homes.
Devin just shrugs - what kid can understand the mysterious logic of
adults? Chloe, older and more savvy, thinks it was because the three get
"really wild" together.
After
breakfast they line up beside the swimming pool, a spot of rich blue
cradled in the dusty foothills like a robin's egg in its nest.
Chloe
and Sharee jump into the cold water and start splashing with the other
kids, while D.J. hesitantly dips in a toe, then backs away.
"I
need a life jacket," he mumbles.
His
mop of brown hair barely visible above the puffy orange life jacket,
Devin steps into the pool. Chloe swims over, her blonde hair slicked
back and cheeks flushed. In the shallow end, she coaxes him out of his
life jacket and encourages him to swim toward her.
"Go
D.J.! Go D.J.!" she cheers, walking backward as Devin paddles
frantically.
When
he reaches the wall, she calls, "D.J., you did it!"
Taking care of Devin comes naturally to Chloe. In their chaotic home,
she took on the role of responsible adult. People who work with foster
kids have a name for this: parentification. After several years with a
grown-up mother of her own, Chloe has relaxed into the role of bossy big
sister with Sharee. Devin still brings out the mom in her, though.
They
join a raucous game of Marco Polo, a sort of blindfolded water-tag,
their voices blending into the chorus of kids splashing around the pool.
Chloe lets Devin tag her.
A few
minutes later, Chloe hops out of the pool and returns to the edge with
her own life jacket.
"Look, Deej!" she shouts, and once she has his attention she jumps,
cannonball-style, into the deep end. Then she does it again, splashing
Devin.
He
edges up the side of the pool from the 7-foot mark, where she jumped, to
the 4-foot mark, where he does his own cannonball. Chloe cheers wildly.
It's
a timid Devin who leaps in but a grinning D.J. who bobs back up, shaking
off water like a happy otter. He turns to Chloe with a wide,
see-what-I-did smile. She smiles back with sisterly pride.
---
On
the third day of camp, the hot air smells of sage. The sun warms
Sharee's shoulders as she watches from her towel on the shore while
Chloe and D.J. paddle plastic kayaks in a pond.
Nearly every camp activity, from rafting to horseback riding, prompts
D.J.'s standard preliminary assessment: "That looks scary." But with his
sisters at his side, he does it all.
Chloe
has been trying to capsize her kayak since the moment she launched it.
D.J. had been regarding the water timidly, but once Chloe splashes into
the pond with a great shriek, he starts rocking his kayak back and
forth.
Sharee smiles, watching. One thing she likes about camp, she says, is
that now she knows her brother really likes her.
How
does she know? It's the little things he does, like when they sit
together at mealtimes.
"Like
if I say, 'Can you please pass the butter,' he'll pass it down to me,"
Sharee explains. "And one time, I was going to get butter and he said,
'Let me get it for you."'
Camp
To Belong's elaborately planned "signature events" - birthday parties,
sibling pillow exchanges, inspiration nights when kids talk about hard
times they've overcome - are designed to draw siblings closer together.
And they work. But sometimes the best moments happen during the barely
organized chaos of mealtimes.
After
conquering his kayak's center of gravity and swimming in the pond, D.J.
arrives at lunch in a grand mood. He addresses his mashed potatoes:
"Wild potato, you make my heart sing," he sings in a half-growl.
Soon
he finds that nearly everything at the table makes his heart sing: wild
Sharee, wild Chloe, wild fork. He catches Sharee's eye and they burst
into giggles. Turning quiet, D.J. lays one rosy, round cheek on Sharee's
thin shoulder.
When
the campers finish lunch and the counselors are clearing plates, D.J.
teaches everyone a new trick.
"Put
your hand down like this," he says, laying his hand flat on the table.
Turn down these two fingers, he says, pointing to the middle and fourth
fingers. "Now hold your hand up," he commands, and the kids hold up the
American sign language sign for "I love you."
"Aha!" D.J. says, grinning triumphantly. "You love me!"
One
thing Lynn Price worries about is setting the kids up for
disappointment. When they come to camp, foster children enter a world of
constant smiles, hugs, high fives, sibling support and unconditional
love - territory as unfamiliar to many as the dark cabin path was to D.J.
on his first night.
That's why, on the application form, Price asks how parents and social
workers plan to support the siblings' relationships. She wants to make
sure the camp doesn't simply remind brothers and sisters what they're
missing.
Price
believes camp should foster a lifelong bond. Her ultimate goal is
shutting down Camp To Belong for good. In Price's perfect world,
siblings wouldn't be split apart in foster care, except perhaps when one
sibling has abused another.
Yet
sibling separation is a sad fact of life for foster children, who number
more than 550,000 nationwide. Recent studies found 42 percent lived
apart from a sibling in California, 47 percent in New York City.
Studies show that siblings who stick together in foster care have fewer
problems than those who are separated. Some states now recognize sibling
rights, and child welfare agencies often strive to keep siblings in
foster care together. But a shortage of foster parents often makes that
impossible. According to the National Foster Parent Association, the
number of children in foster care increased 90 percent between 1986 and
1996, while the number of foster families decreased 3 percent.
Price
knows there's a long way to go before Camp To Belong isn't needed.
---
The
last full day of camp finds D.J. giddy and chatty. He has discovered
that anyone's name can be made vastly more amusing by the addition of
the sound "ooooooooh" at the end.
"Listen to this!" he exclaims, bouncing on his toes with excitement. "Melindooooooooooh,"
he says, rolling his eyes at a counselor named Melinda. It's funny, he
explains, "because - dough." He mimics eating something. Bemused,
Melinda can't help laughing.
The
closing campfire is a notoriously weepy event. "Bring tissues," veteran
counselors warn. But when the moment arrives, the mood is strangely
buoyant.
The
campers are asked to tell everyone their most memorable moment from the
past few days. Some kids shyly pass, but many are eager to talk.
Counselors add wood to the fire as the night stretches on.
"Sharing a bedroom like before we got in foster care," one girl offers.
"We
were all in the pool, and my sister's weave ponytail fell out!" says
another girl. ("Stop it!" cries her sister, laughing.)
"When
I put the birthday cupcake in my sister's face," one little brother says
with relish.
Chloe
stands up.
"My
most memorable moment," she begins, "was when my brother D.J., and - I
think her name is Laura? - was running around the tree. It just made me
feel good because that's when I saw my brother was the happiest kid."
Her
hoarse but clear voice carrying over the crackling fire, she adds: "I
haven't seen him that happy in a long time."
---
The
next morning, as buses prepare to leave camp at 7:30, the kids are too
tired to cry. In fact, they're a little cranky. Many spend their final
minutes together arguing over who is touching whose luggage improperly.
The
campers gather on the grassy lawn where they first arrived and wait to
return to their separate lives. D.J. wanders off to the rock wall again,
inspecting for snakes.
For a
moment, it looks as if he might end camp the way he began, submerged in
his own solitary world. But when he spies Chloe and Sharee
tickle-fighting on a pile of luggage, he drops his stick and runs over.
The
three collapse in giggles, tickling one another until D.J. stretches out
on his back in happy surrender, his face lit by the warm morning sun.
He's laughing with his sisters as if he'll never stop. |
