Closing the Circle
Girl Scout Pin
As the fourth year of my retirement came to a close last fall, I found myself living life somewhat cloistered, floating about without much purpose. That's a dangerous state for my A-type extrovert personality that derives strength from interactions with other people. I was becoming, when not writing, a "lady who lunches", a gallery and museum voyeur, and a tenacious home tidy-might with onset OCD.
My writing was resolute, but to be frank about it, fiction writing is a self-serving personal endeavor providing little benefit to others. Writing is also an lonesome craft involving research and hours at the computer composing and recomposing, piling layer upon layer of words to the page. My situation, I concluded, was that I had lacked the sparkle that interactions with people brought into my daily life.
There were options. One option was to stop writing and get a real job. They are certainly plentiful here in Washington D.C., even for wrinkling folks like myself, but I don't want to work full time and sacrifice of my writing. A second option was to become a volunteer and join a non-profit. But that, I learned from previous experience, has its risks. Too often I found that my feminist drive to help women become independent, self-directed, positive thinking women, ended in frustration, not satisfaction. It seemed like every time I thought I'd found the right organization, I ended up surrounded with many fellow volunteers who seemed to be driven more by their own self-interest and promotion, or who wanted to "think big plans" rather than do the dirty work of making things happen.
Then last fall, as we bought Girl Scout cookies once again from our Brownie granddaughter, I mused about my own Girl Scout experience...It all started when my mom plunged me and a bunch of other first grade girls into Girl Scouts. We learned to cook out, camp out and call out nature on long walks in the woods with a parent, Mrs. Summers. We sold cookies, worked on badges and generally had a good time doing things together, even when an activity seemed stupid to our little brains. Although some my closest friends left scouting during junior high and high school, I stayed in. By the time I graduated from high school, I was a first class senior scout, proudly wearing that not so glamorous Girl Scout green uniform ,and I was on my way to Boise Idaho, for the ultimate Girl Scout extravaganza encampment of the time, the National Roundup.
I traveled with a train load of Midwest scouts (my first trip west), leaving from Chicago and making our way through the Iowa plains, Dakota badlands, Montana forested mountains and then ending at the encampment somewhere in the mountains of Idaho. On the way, we ate meals at long tables in a rolling box car fitted with wood burning stoves. At the encampment, we lived in tents, cooked our meals against the stunning backdrop of Idaho's fir covered mountains. At night, we gazed at the Milky Way from our sleeping bags with a few of us pining for our boyfriends in the ink black nights. But during the day, we were all in for Girl Scouting. We hiked, swapped patches, made "sit upons" to keep our fannies dry, gossiped endlessly with new friends, and attended events of all sorts with several thousand other girls. It was magical.
It was also life changing for me in an unexpected way I've never forgotten. I found myself for the first time on the "big tent" stage in front of many of those thousands of girls sprinkled with chaperoning adults. They were taking what I said seriously.. How could that possibly be? Had the stars aligned to make it so? It seems that my own behavior had sealed my fate. Earlier in the week at another "big tent" event, me, just a dot in the sea of Scouts, had such a reaction to what an adult on stage said that I exploded inside with indignation. I stood up and asked the question, "How can you be so sure what "girls our age" should believe?" There ensued a lively panel discussion and, when it was over, instead of being "kicked-out", I was asked to be on the last day panel. For sure, I would have earned me a "Big Mouth badge," if there had been such a thing. The experience slapped me up the side of my face with a new sense of my own potential power and evidence that a short blond girl who liked rick-rack and Rhinestones will be listened to if she takes the risk and just speaks up. I left the encampment armed with this new knowledge and, as expected, lots of camp dirt in my fingernails.
Therefore, I find myself, age 70+ now, coming full circle after more than a 50 years lapse, returning to Girl Scouts. Last week I was officially appointed to be a volunteer Service Unit Manager here in Arlington, VA. I support 29 troops and 330+ girls with a small team of eight volunteers, most of whom are also troop leaders. My mission is to communicate, promote, organize, plan and facilitate the support of 60+ troop leaders. The Service Unit team and I take care of the troop leaders and the troop leaders take care of their girls. It's a perfect match. I'm now interacting with dedicated, energetic women who are not involved to promote themselves or their careers. They're involved with Girl Scouts to build girls of courage, leadership, boldness, and confidence; girls who will make the world a better place whether they run for office, lead a company, teach others, or just pay it forward throughout their lives.
And, just to keep me on my toes, I'm surrounded by women younger than me. Women with with busy lives filled with work and children as well as scouting. They appreciate that fact that I have the time they don't have to do the work that I'm actually good at. I still have time to write. But the best part is that I don't have to figure out what to do with a gaggle of giggling little girls or selfie-taking teens. Life is good!