Helen has the same brusqueness of the native Pennsylvanians that I have met. Back in Pennsylvania, I’m considered an outsider and not usually included in activities, but here in Michigan, I was her ally from the Keystone state. Although she seemed rough around the edges, I think some of her gruffness was a result of her loss of hearing. The girl campers who would come into the infirmary, especially the young ones, spoke like mice. It was hard for me to make out their names when they gave them to me, and sometimes even I was forced to ask for their nametags so I could record their visit. Poor Helen had to strain to hear their complaints and treat them. As with my grandparents, her inability to hear everything often came across as meanness, or impatience. However, it was nothing more than a product of necessity—speak up for heaven’s sake! After spending a few moments with her, however, there was no denying that she was a softie on the inside. She loved a good joke and at moments, I felt like she anticipated the next joke from me. I was happy to oblige.
Helen has a very roll-her-eyes-at-nonsense kind of approach to nursing. I suspect it was her 30+ years in the Philadelphia school system that helped her weed out the fakers, and recognize the actual sick kids. She had all kinds of interesting insights into kids. During one discussion of lice, she taught us that the bugs are actually speedy creatures. She had seen them running across the bangs of one Latino girl whose parents had said they had no idea that she was infected. She knew all the ins and outs of nits and combs and seemed completely non-plussed at the idea while the rest of us squirmed in our seats.
My favorite experience with Helen involved “the dynamic duo”. Every day, three times a day, like clockwork, two Junior girls would show up in the infirmary. They had arrived at camp together, and obviously had decided to spend their days together, inseparable. It was a strange phenomenon to see both of them, sick with the exact same complaint, at the exact same time of day. They both played viola in the Junior Orchestra, and it was only on the second-to-last day of their session did I put 2 and 2 together and realize that they were skipping their sectional rehearsals. On that day, Helen saw them come in again, and looking them straight in the eye, she made a pushing motion with her hands and said, “You’re fine. Come back after supper.” They tried the puppy-dog eyes on Helen, but she only looked at them more sternly and repeated, “If you’re not feeling well after supper, come back then.” I couldn’t help but smile when biking away at the end of my shift I saw them dejectedly walking up the hill to their sectional rehearsals. Helen had won the war.
The beautiful thing about Helen is that she doesn’t know she’s getting older. After her two week stint at Interlochen, she was headed back to the City of Brotherly Love to host friends from years past in her home. After that, she was headed to Grandparents Camp to spend some quality time with her grandchildren. I saw her at every concert I attended, and she would tell us about other concerts that she had seen and heard. She loved them all. I’m reminded of the quote by Henry David Thoreau, “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.” A perfect description of Helen.
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