The children crowd together, laughing and giggling, teetering in high-heeled shoes, wigs, go go boots; dresses and gowns. Some are wearing street clothes, but also a hat; a flowing scarf; a necklace. They fidget beside a runway flanked by 200 folding chairs, waiting for the show to begin. Some of the children are obviously girls—though they aren’t, biologically, and some look like boys. It’s hard to tell what some of these kids are, and for once that doesn’t matter a bit. Some are nervous, other’s beaming.
A boom-box blasts dance music tinnily through the auditorium, as each kid makes their way down the runway, to universal acclaim and support; love and affection, sauntering through a fusillade of camera flashes and a small ocean of applause.
Some mug. Some vamp. Gender normative siblings tumble down the runway in skewed wigs, laughing at the absurdity of a boy dressed as a girl. Some walk calmly, tentative smiles tugging at dignified masks of childish reserve. Tiny princesses skip. Feather boas twirl.
Paris is burning.
Welcome to Camp I Am, the yearly long weekend meeting of the extended CNMC support group for the parents of gender non-conforming children. Hard-working volunteer camp organizers pull the weekend together, pouring hundreds of hours into this labor of love. For the last two years my family has made the trip to Washington DC to attend this event which has transformed the lives of hundreds of children living throughout the continental US, and beyond.
The transformation for some is subtle; sometimes it’s delayed. On his first trip to the camp, a child may take a few days to engage, a few days to realize that they are in a place where they can open up. Some kids go through the weekend making only a friend or two, hanging back. Oscar was like that. The last day, suddenly, something happened, and the friendships started emerging. Of course, then it was time to go.
“We’re coming back,” Oscar told us.
And so we have. We date the easing of some of Oscar’s existential angst to our first weekend at Camp I Am. Many parents do.
The camp has burst its bounds, growing rapidly since its inception. Each year brings more families; the hotel in the DC area can no longer contain the shrieking giggling hordes of GV kids and their siblings and parents. This coming year it will be at a campsite in the midwest, to accommodate growth, and to allow some kids from the redder parts of the country ease of access.
Some families fly thousands of miles to attend; others drive in from the suburbs of DC.
The camp is an outgrowth of the community built by Catherine Tuerk and Dr. Edguardo Mienville of the Children’s National Medical Center, (CNMC) and it brings together both the real-time, face to face group centered on the DC area, and the folks from the parent mailing list.
For the families who attend the gathering it is a unique opportunity to feel…normal. Better than normal; it’s more than the absence of fear, the absence of ignorance. A kind of giddy euphoria infuses the weekend. The families know each other through the list serve, and as faces are put to the names in email headers, relationships which have formed over months and years unfold in relaxed conversations. Conversations which don’t require a preliminary dissertation on the development of childhood gender identify to be understood.
There are arts and crafts, karaoke, a talent show. Hours around the pool goofing off; a picnic, a camp fire and smores. Camp stuff. Last year we added a song written by a Camp member, the Camp I Am kumbaya, “All I want to be is me.”
Kids being kids fractionate into same age groupings; friendships spring up among the siblings instantly in a way that is hard to understand. Maybe we are a kind of family; or something both more and less. Parents meander through the park where the cookout is held, unworried about where their kids are, and who they’re playing with in this large crowd. For some, this is the first time in a life time they have felt this way.
Over all too quickly, the Washington Monument splits a cloudy sky as the families gather on the mall to say goodbye. Tourists stream around the knot of families and children. If some do a double take at the group t-shirt, the pink and blue yin and yang, and the obviously hetero groupings and gamboling androgynous children, it’s only for a moment. But still, the world is out there, and we are going back into it.
I hang back, letting Oscar mingle, unnoticed, but not out of earshot.
A boy asks Oscar the loaded question, which only these kids can ask each other.
“So. Are you a boy or a girl?”
Oscar considers for a moment. “A boy.”
“Are you sure?” The boy asks.
Oscar smiles. “Yes.”
We are what we are, even if we don’t always look the part. Our true selves forged from a collection of unlikely things, shiny and dark, boy and girl, man and woman. We tremble in the wind of events, changing and growing, a new person for every person we meet, and at the same time, consistent, unchanging and unchangeable. The paradox of personality. We think therefore we are.
I love, therefore, I am.
NOTE: Parents interested in Camp I Am and the CNMC support group should click here; there is an intake process with a fee, to help protect the group, which screens families before allowing access to the mailing list. Many families consider it the best money they’ve ever spent.
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If you’re the type of person who liked to think of themselves as hip; creative; bohemian, unbound by convention, having your first kid can be a humbling experience. Because as it happens, you enter a world of norms.
