Dear Summer Camp

It's that time of year! Summer camp!

Last week Therese went. She went to an overnight, more hardcore kind of camp, where they did things like "out trips" and backpacking. That's not really her thing, but she was game to give it a try since the version she usually goes to had a waitlist. "Is she active, can she handle the physical demands of it?" they'd asked, just to make sure it'd be the right fit. I considered how she'd just demonstrated to Hosea, in fed-up-ed-ness, that she'd definitely passed him up in jiu jitsu moves, I considered how she's definitely much more tough than people might anticipate, "Oh yeah, she'll be fine." "Yeah we're just asking cause last year some people came who weren't able to keep up, and they had to go home early...". 

That's not the kind of camp I've ever been to! I always went to "church camp", as we called it. First, it was a horse camp. Why? I was never one of those horse-girls...! Well, who knows, maybe my Mom wait-listed me for a different one and I had to end up going here instead! With my rich friend who had tennis courts in her backyard. We rode horses at this Miracle Ranch for a week. The thing I remember most, aside from traumatic experiences on those horses, was the little log store overlooking the water, where I could buy chocolate Charleston Chews like. every. day. 

I'm sure we sang songs and prayed, and did all that other church camp stuff, but I don't remember that.

I only went to Miracle Ranch once. Not into horses! But I think most summers of my late elementary and early middle school years I went to summer camp - church camp! These other ones I remember more swimming in lakes (Millersylvania?), cabins, running around doing water gun fights, praying and singing tons of worship songs by the fire, and then the drama of The Last Day, when I'd make sure to get the addresses of my new friends. ADDRESSES! So we could be pen pals!

I saved those pen pal letters for many years, but I have no idea where they are now. I kept them in a Gap shopping bag under my bed, yes for many years, adding to them less and less the older I got. Hey, when I committed to being your pen pal I'd Be Your Pen Pal! And I treasured the letters that came my way in return. The end of camp was always so sad for me (not the drop off, sorry Parents! hahahahaha!). All those memories, all that bonding and laughing and running around and being crazy. All that going from shy to Best Friends in a SNAP! And then, suddenly the spell would be broken and I'd be back home. Sleeping in on a summer morning and starting the day with The Price Is Right, or something like that. I mean, that's what it felt like, the come-down. Right?

Aside: A couple people around here recently *confided* in me that (haha that's what it felt like), "Oh, so I signed my son up for this summer camp. It's a Christian camp (hush hush / gasp!). I hope he's respectful! I told him to be respectful," then, nervously, "He might be converted, who knows!" What is with this shame and fear of anything Christian over in these parts (many parts)? These upper middle class academic-y type people, poo-poo-ing anything Christian, but...secretly signing their kids up for Christian camps? I'd be fine with a Christian camp for my kids...tell me more!! (They go to a United Church camp, just cause...that's what I found?! Hush Hush Gasp!! I don't consider that the same as the "Christian" camps these other people are afraid of...one of these other people sent her son here as well--with no qualms--so clearly...there is a difference!) Both these people, I told them, "You know, don't worry about it. I went to Christian camps all growing up and there were always kids from kind of outside The Church that came. It was no big deal! We'd all hang out,"..."Oh really? Ok, good." 

Anyway, so this morning, dropping Hosea off for (United Church!) camp, I heard a girl a bit older than him talk about how she needed her phone! "I'm going through withdrawals! I spend like 9 hours on it every day!" She was...not joking. I have a feeling these kids don't end up getting new friends' ADDRESSES after camp, and they don't become pen pals. 

...

"How was it, Therese?" Before pick up last Friday, I was heavy all morning. Hosea had even said the night before, "I wonder what Therese is doing right now. She's probably sad, cause it's almost the last day," he'd mused. So when I went to pick her up that next morning, I kept thinking how it would be so emotional. Old feelings of my own came back, of saying goodbye to people at camp, knowing I'd maybe never see them again, or at the very least I wouldn't see them again for a whole year. As she came up the dock from the water taxi I barely recognized her, first of all. She was so sporty and tired! She wasn't socializing with anyone either. "Well, how was it?" "I went on an 8 hour hike, at Level 7 elevation! Mama, I just want to go to the regular camp next year." Ha! "I have this gash on my leg, and it bled through the band-aid!" "What happened?" "I have NO IDEA." 

Ok. As we waded through the people, up the dock: "So, did you get people's...phone numbers?" (Hey I knew it wouldn't be ADDRESSES, I'm not that behind the times.) She looked at me with pity, pity for my ignorance, but patient pity, "Well, yeah, I mean I got their Snap Chats."

Ok!

I learned that apparently all these kids had "brain rot" and "it's an Internet Thing, Mama". I learned that a place like the United Church, known, to me at least, for its very outward and publicized teachings of tolerance and inclusivity, hosted camp for a bunch of kids with brain rot and insensitive senses of humour! "It's not working, Mama," she says often, of the whole push and emphasis on inclusivity, anti-bullying, all that. "It's NOT working," she says on the dock, rolling her eyes after locking them with mine for emphasis! I'm not worried about HER...bullying or being bullied. I'm proud she's an observant human being! And, I'm curious! So then, she gave me examples. Which I won't give here. But...maybe they have something to do with "iPad kid brain rot"?

At pick up (and drop off), with Therese, the hug was non-existent. We just got right into chatting. She is her mother's daughter. I tried--to hug!--(isn't that what Good Moms do?)--but she was...not receptive! Hosea, the guy hugging me around every frikkin corner these days, gave me a nice and good one as I dropped him off, but! for once HE PULLED AWAY FIRST! I felt it! Make no mistake! Maybe this is why the moms at Therese's camp, picking up their older boys, went completely gaga when they saw another mom get a Wave From Her Son, from the dock. "Oh my gosh, you got a wave!!" the jealousy ooozing out, like it was 1963 and the dock was actually a stage The Beatles were performing on. Then, so giddy with surprise, I heard one of the jealous moms exclaim: "Oh!!! I got a wave too!" 

Is that what it will come to?

So, it wasn't emotional picking Therese up from camp last week. She's fine. I mean, she got everyone's Snap Chats so what's the big deal?! Dropping Hosea off this morning, though, he's still my little Big Guy. Not a teen. Not a non-huggy-girl of mine. He still wants me to read to him every night, for goodness sake! "Until I'm 12, Mama, ok?" he offered recently. "Love, look at it this way: You GET to read to him," Simon told me, knowing I'm sometimes exasperated with Having To Do This Every Night aren't you old enough yet to Read To Yourself? "Mama, I'm ready for you to read to me!" he says. "Yeah, you're right, Simon." Well, camp gives me a break! I won't be reading to him this week. 

All the families were there this morning, standing around chatting with their kids, ready to send them off--and not read to them for a week. Then all the goodbyes, the long hug where my Big Guy pulled away(!), the lingering waves, the peeking faces through the windows of the bus that would take them up to the ferries, the awkward conversation and standing around cause hey that's what a Good Parent would do, stay till the bus leaves, right? If you can? 

It all ended, the bus left. They're off to camp!

Then suddenly this Dad broke the spell we'd all been under: "Well, I guess it's time to go to work now."

Ha! 

Summer camp. Pen pals. Church songs. Swimming and crushes and hoping to see them next year and hikes and cabins and cool counselors and conversions (probably?) and backwards conversions (probably? is that a thing?) and bonding and games. Away from home! Away from phones, and The Price Is Right. Away from the usual. Coming back a slightly different person than you were before. More sporty, maybe. Like Therese. With gashes in legs that we don't even remember getting. New freckles--Hosea will have tons of them. He'll look taller, too, when he comes back. I know it. And I'll be ready to read to him again, sure. 

Well, I guess it's time to go to work now!

💗Megan

PS (Harkening back to my pen pal days with a PS) Speaking of work, so here's a timely song, for the occassion, with themes much different than Summer Camp. But it lingers, doesn't it? It's in me somewhere still, clearly, and clearly in these guys performing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOzI0KXxTqU Stan Rogers, White Collar Holler

PPS And, if you need a salve for that song's message now, listen to this short talk that helped me recently, in the doldrums of life, when I felt it all to be the opposite of Summer Camp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9vMczQ3jiM Academy of Ideas: Life is a Quest, the Antidote to a Wasted Existence