The Exchange, Day 14

Will is at camp. If I were smarter I could pull it off his phone and enjoy it again–or share it: a video of the funniest night chez Burk this month. Maybe this decade. As usual, Camille had gone up to shower and retire for the night around 9 or 9:30. That was pretty typical. Since we were on the go each day, I thought it wise to turn in early, greet the next day rested and refreshed. NOT! This reasonable behavior was just a ruse. He would then reappear around 10 or 10:30 for a “drink,” but now I think it was to case the joint, re-engage, and stir up a little bedtime fun. From there would ensue pillow fights, food fights, wrestling matches, dance contests, and the funniest night of all: the laundry basket races.

Will started it. By hopping down the hall to say goodnight, wearing his hip-high back plastic laundry basket. The words “what possessed you?” come to mind. The answer, also obvious: the basket comes up pretty high, and with two side handles and rigid rubber-like plastic, it’s the perfect vehicle for an updated sack-race. Turn around and Camille is coming from the other end of the hall in Ellie’s handled basket, hopping along with a little heap of his dirty clothes still bouncing in the bottom. They’re not really racing–our hall is too short to get up to speed. They are more like jousting, leaping toward each other (both legs pinned in basket as described), sort of hunched over to grip the handles but reaching up to slap a high five on the way by. Camille’s basket is shorter, knee high, so he is really bent over trying to propel the thing. Meanwhile we are all howling so uncontrollably it’s a wonder they have any abdominal muscles free to power things. They hop, they race, they execute 360s and other skater moves with both legs pinned inside their baskets, clutching them up like hip waders and impressively agile. Is there anything funnier than watching a boy, half his body encased in black plastic basket, jumping high enough to clear a bed–and land square on it and then, before losing balance, jump off–and land THUNK! on his feet? I think not. I am laughing so hard I can barely film it. In the end, the photographer is the only one who topples over for weeping hysterics, and Gus the dog stands confused in the middle of the mayhem trying not to get bowled over by basket boys, while we all scream “Stay away from the stairs in those things!” There. Who needs iPhone video recap, after all.

My mother asks how I like having two Williams. It’s true, it is hare-brained squared. It is wrestling and pillow fights and sliding down our carpeted half-stairs as if they (the boys)were eight. Eight combined. They fight over the front seat, the TV remote, the last this, the first that, the blue one. It really is like having two brothers here, twins separates at birth. It is lots of laughter and silliness and noises we shall not name, but I just have to put out there that it is not two Williams. Not only is my boy in a league of his own as a skilled damage engineer and cultivator of disaster, not only is he a mastermind of pranks, pyrotechnics, and ideas that should never have been…. he is also a genuine genius of the heart, helpful beyond measure and kind beyond his years. So let me just put that out there, before anyone questions who I put on the plane to France last Saturday. There is only one William.

Still, the parallels are amusing. As Camille packs his “suitcase” (looks like a weekender on wheels) I help ready Will for camp. In perfect timing he is leaving for Camp Hanover the day after Camille goes, the week I am completely un-sonned–and undone, chez Burk. I am happy for him. He is going to miss his partner in crime. He, too, has adopted the “minimalist” style of travelling. Six days: one backpack and a sleeping bag. “Yeah,” he says, as we are laying stuff out on his bed, “think I’m going to cut down on my showers this time.” It’s pretty typical and pretty funny: after obliging my “help” in his hot little room with the packing list, backpack fit to burst is carried down to await transport. When I go back up to Will’s room later I find all the T shirts, extra shorts, PJs, swim towel and pillow he has pulled back out. This time he takes his 12-year-old matter in hand and says (I kid you not): “Let me help you out here, mom. I’m putting an X through all the stuff I’m not taking. Then you can put your checks.” Okay, well if you get eaten alive by bugs on your sun-blistered head COLD in the pouring rain, don’t call me! What exactly is in the bag? A couple changes of clothing, plenty of clean underwear, half a dozen flashlights, two pocketknives, a swim suit, a bar of soap and maybe a toothbrush. Closed-toed shoes tied to the outside like buoys and we’re off.

The van smells like something died in it. For real. On the day I ask for Camille’s help cleaning it, we discover an assortment of dried up drink cups, a pair of trampoline park socks, another random sock, water bottles, gum wrappers, a wet towel, a clutch of cables, chargers and USB orphans, and week-old mail, unopened. I guess we really have been living out of it. He likes the job but for some reason decides to climb on the roof to wash it. Do all French people wash their cars standing on them? I have picture of Camille standing, fully clothed down to the socks and sneakers, hosing down my van from the top. So there’s a first. He is reasonably helpful, although there’s a noticeable division of labor here. Will and Bill are out in the woods in their camo yard-wear, wielding axes and heavy equipment to clear paths for bike trails and clean up the property a bit, while French boy finishes his toilette and agreeably pitches in. But Heaven help us if we really do discover the dead animal or whatever is making such a smell in this car.

Midway through the exchange we host a boy scout camp out. That’s what all this clean-up patrol is for, the day of. What could be more “American summer” than 8 or 10 boys pitching their own tents and cooking their own dinners in your backyard? Oops, did I just say “pitching tents” and “cooking dinner?” Better make that the other way around: pitching their dinner and cooking in their tents. There are so many marshmallow skins flung through the woods and Jiffy Pop in those trees that the birds are elated and the squirrels are confused. I’m pleased to say the scouts do not trash the house at all, they are barely in it, and though I leave on the patio light and the backdoor unlocked no one really uses our bathroom. Which is not a good thing, ladies.

If only they were teens! But they are not teens, or a few healthy inhibitions might have helped them reign it in. I guess the worst part of their bonded brotherhood are the bodily noises and smells they exhibit no shame in displaying. Aye ay ay! Contrived or not, they make disgusting noises at the table and disgusting smells in the car. The ride home from North Carolina was so odiferous I made a mental note to bar Chik-fil-A for the rest of his stay. I could barely drive. Worse yet, there is a besting contest of burping and belching. Did Will ever carry on like this before? Surely I would have remembered. He tells me it’s pretty common at school, names a few kids who have won, like, the trophy prize of admiration among their peers. Camille tell me in his house he would get clocked upside the head. Ah, well??! I tell them to “Stop acting like barbarians.” “I’m not a barbarian, mom!” Will exclaims, offended. “I’m a professional.”

I get the sense that relations are strained for Camille and his real brother, Paul. Paul is 17. The boys deliberately avoided each other on the airplane coming over, and they have no interest in seeing each other while here. I had eagerly exchanged contact info with the other American host family, thinking an ice cream outing or putt putt golf would be the perfect opportunity to share exchange-hood, compare notes, connect with not only a friend from home but a brother: “NON!” says Camille before we are even out of the airport pick up. “Eese not necessairey.” Can’t say I understand what that’s about, I would have killed for a friend or a sibling while away all those many miles long ago. A soul who understands you without trying.

And maybe Camille has found just that. Here, halfway through our exchange, I watch these boys wrestle and tussle, pound each other in the swimming pool and then reach down to lift the other up out of the water. I watch them argue over whose turn is it on the fish pole and then the man-out turn right around and bait the man-in’s hook. I watch their little backs at the end of the dock, side by side, or seated waist-deep in endless shallows of the James river, gazing out at a setting sun, their hair clumped and their fingers pruned by five hours in the water. I see them fight over whose playlist will be fronted on Camille’s portable speaker, tucked into a drink holder as we drive, and then a half hour later I notice we’re sharing again and that’s sax music I hear. I see them the very last week, when we are all just starting to realize the separation coming, I see Will suspend the family “rule” about who gets the front seat and simmer down about the double standards going on. Even on the ride to DC, when difference and proximity had them pretty peeved at each other… (Mom, he’s not even ready! He’s not even packed. Mom. Look! He’s up there on his phone. And he hasn’t done anything you asked.) They insert their hot, mad little bodies into the back seat, side by side but not loving it. We drive. Halfway up 95, the tempers have cooled and the novelty and anticipation of a roadtrip have kicked in.  One glance in the rearview says it all: their faces have softened and they are speaking to each other again. Camille has his speaker in hand and is shaking like a salt shaker and Will is playing air drums. They are jamming out as I drive to a shared playlist with a little white cord strung between them.

Happiness is a shared earbud.