Let it be said that that number fill-in-the-blank about parenting goes like this: you can anticipate many things, and then you’re bowled over by what should be obvious and you totally missed.
A task like sending one’s child to overnight camp for the first time offers many such learning opportunities.
Full disclosure: although I was late to the overnight camp game myself (one summer, age 16) and so not a lifelong camper-to-counselor type (counselor summer, age 18), I loved my experiences at Farm and Wilderness in Vermont. Ask my dear husband whether I really said this in the hospital on the day I gave birth to our first child (a boy): He has more F&W camps to choose from (than a girl would).
Journey’s End Farm Camp absolutely fit my ideal camp vision. I knew it from the first I heard about it (from our lovely friend and babysitter, Mim Shafer): picture small, a tiny bit ramshackle—not as in falling apart, but as in always needing a bit more TLC—busy yet unhurried in the modern day sensibility of technology or some theoretical notion about “enrichment.” Imagine animals, garden, sleeping essentially outdoors, singing, crafts, a small pond, laughing a lot, noticing what’s beautiful around you. Imagine this trusted formula untouched for decades. Leave notions of color wars or merit badges at another camp. Toss in the Quaker ethos of seeing the light in every person. You’ve got Journey’s End.
To me, it sounded—and indeed, in its way is—a pint-sized, less polished, more eternally homespun cousin to F&W. You can start just a bit earlier than you can F&W, age seven (there aren’t many seven year-olds during any given year).
So, I was—and I think my friends and dear husband and even my mother would vouch for me—a pretty (at least relatively) cool cucumber as my little guy went off. We packed not all that much stuff, and save for a new pair of shoes and a rain jacket, it was all grungy or at least tag sale/hand-me-down acquired if new to us. We were upbeat about his going, tender when he got scared a few days before, stoic when he was chipper and ready the day of. He wasn’t going to have us contribute to any sadness, even though, honestly, letting go of my “baby” like that tugged, just a bit. His big brothers haven’t broken me in for this particular letting go. He is the pioneering overnight camper child in our family.
Like I’d wanted to do practically since that day I first gave birth nearly fifteen years earlier, I sent a few missives ahead for the first mail delivered to campers and I tucked a brief note and a tiny surprise into the duffel bag. I wrote every single day, a postcard or note, maybe sending a little something a couple of times (that is, until three days before the two-week camp ended: I sent stickers, a few beads and a string, and one of his favorite little stuffed animals I found when cleaning up).
I heard from Mim (via Facebook) a couple of days after he arrived that he was eating raw chard and making a wooden spoon and that the staff agreed with my intake description of him as “plucky.” The first letter home—a quintessential inaugural missive from camp letter—arrived a few days later (photo here). A week after that, one more—
Dear Mom, I really miss you. I am going to start a bowl. Love, Remy
His handwriting looked confident and he described something he was doing. I took it that he was happy, and mostly, two days from picking him up, could barely wait to wrap my arms around my camper. I really miss you tugged at me, just a tiny bit. Being the confident-in-you kind of mama, I did not once write that I missed him (always that I loved him, many, many hearts and such, but if he got a letter saying I missed him and he was feeling a bit tender at that moment, would my missing help? I decided it wouldn’t, not really). Besides, I knew if he was miserable, Mim would let me know, and I’d heard nothing more. I really did not worry after that one report from her; chard, a spoon, and “plucky” were all I needed.
All that said hugging my camper was as sweet a hug as I’ve ever experienced.
I loved seeing that Journey’s End was exactly as I imagined and that he was entirely as comfortable there as I’d hoped and trusted he’d be. I took a zillion photos and was also glad we’d brought Saskia along so he could show her everything (dear husband did the math: when Remy’s twelve and on his last possible summer as a Journey’s End camper, Saskia will be seven so could start).
As we were led around camp, I had that flash of realization, the thing so obvious it was the feather knocking me over: Remy’s second missive, the one that started with I really miss you? Duh, you can miss someone and be absolutely and totally happy. It’s not either/or. Happens all the time. I was so focused upon worrying (cool cucumber, pshaw) I forgot that part about missing; it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, not at all.
