Moms On Strike

I recognize how hard moms work and how much goes into the weekly management and administration of raising multiple children, mostly because women can’t wait to tell me how busy they are and how hard they’re working— as if they’re the only ones.  Two friends of mine are unusual in that they don’t begin every conversation with a mandatory update on their childrens’ sports schedules and how much laundry and driving they’re doing.  In fact, you might not even know they had children unless you asked, which is why I appreciate them so.  They will happily answer any questions I might have about child rearing and if a particular child-centric topic comes up they will respond in kind and be more than willing to chat about it, but they have other stories to tell, too—other hobbies and proclivities.  They do not define their very existence solely through the contributions they are making to their childs’ rearing and for that I value them mightily.

I recently learned that these two friends of mine—independent of one another—had gone on mom strike.  These are women who recognize the importance of fostering independence in young children and how crucial it is for a child’s developmental growth to discover and learn to count on the bravery, gumption and creativity in one’s self to problem solve and soldier on.  They are independent women themselves and stay-at-home moms with no hired help.  I decided to interview these two girlfriends recently about their strikes and what precipitated them.

“I was fed up with my family more than usual,” said Liz, leaning into a plate of French fries.  “They just weren’t helping out—at all—and I had reached my limit.”  Liz has three kids ranging in ages from 5 – 11 and her husband is away for work a lot.  “Me, too,” said my other friend, Nancy, “end of my rope.  I’m a single mom and they were really pushing my buttons.  Something had to change.  I realized I was raising my children to be obnoxious and entitled.  I put a note on the fridge that said, ‘Notice: On Strike.  Signed, Mom’.”  Nancy has three teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17.  She said it was this or have herself committed.  We all chuckled.

I asked about their terms as I added more ketchup to what was left of the little mound on the rim of the fry plate.  Liz said, “I gathered the kids together at dinner one night and said that this would be their last supper cooked by Mom for a while.  I would no longer cook, clean, do laundry, help with homework, make their school lunches or remind them what they needed to take to school in the morning.  I was very calm.”  Nancy added, “Same here—very calm.  But I included that they would have to find their own rides to lessons and would have to speak to me using more appreciative language and a respectful tone.”  “Ooooh, I like that,” said Liz, and used a fry to punctuate the word, like.  I asked how long their strikes lasted.  “4 days,” said Liz.  “2 weeks,” said Nancy.  “And what was the upshot?” I asked.  Liz went first.

“Well, the house was disgusting.”  We all laughed and nodded.  “The house smelled, the kids smelled.  I pretty much kept to myself.”  I said, “Like an older European houseguest?”  “Exactly.  It was amazing how much time I had to get other things done.  On day 4 they banded together and started to clean.  They showered and started doing their chores.  They made their own dinners.” “And you just observed?” I asked, fascinated.  “Yup.  One night one of them had a sleeve of Ritz crackers for dinner.  None of them was starving.  There was plenty in the food pantry and the fridge.  They learned to defrost.  The microwave saw a lot of action.”  Nancy piped up, “My kids even went to the market.  They walked into town and carried their groceries back.  They’re older so they cooked their own dinners.  My middle daughter had to find her own rides back and forth to her lessons.  I think that made a big impression on her.”  “I bet,” said Liz, grinning.  We had almost finished the fries but ordered one more round of drinks.  

“And what was it like for you?” I asked.  Nancy said, “Well, the biggest thing for me was that I yelled a lot less.  And they yelled a lot less.  Even though the house was going to hell it was quieter and less stressful emotionally for me.”  “Smellier but lest stressful,” added Liz, smiling.  Nancy nodded as she wiped up the last of the ketchup with the second-to-last fry.  “And the kids started to speak to me in a more respectful tone when they realized that I wouldn’t acknowledge them unless they did.  I think they really got how much I do for them on a daily and weekly basis.  And how capable they are of stepping up and doing for themselves.” 

I asked them if they would recommend going on strike to their friends.  They both said, absolutely.  Nancy said, “It was an amazing week for me.  An incredible lesson in letting go.”  Liz said, “The no-yelling part was really good for me, too.  And I liked watching the kids work together as a team.”  I asked if it changed the family dynamic at all?  “For now,” they both said then laughed.  Nancy said, “Now the threat of a mom strike goes a long way.”  Liz said, “Yup,” and asked for the check.  The last fry remained untouched on the plate. 

The moms haven’t had to go on strike since.

Halloween Thanks

“Halloween decorations are not supposed to be cute, Mom.  They’re supposed to be scary.”  My son was right.  I’d gotten away with the bare minimum of cute for years—taping up his kindergarten paintings of pumpkins along side jolly glow-in-the-dark skeletons.  But now that he was ten, cute would no longer cut it.  “You’re right,” I said.  “I get it.  And we will make an effort to be scarier next year.”  “Next year?!” he said, already resigned, and padded away.  He knew that scary decorations would have to wait, along with pumpkin carving, apparently.  I bought a perfectly serviceable pumpkin but forgot to carve out the time to put down the newspaper and get out the sharp knives.  My costume was an afterthought, too, (a gorilla suit) also serviceable, but without the giddiness of a well thought out pun or creative tour de force like the family who went as the four seasons—spectacular!  Even my son reused an oldie-but-a-goodie costume from a few Halloweens ago.  I knew not to feel guilty about the last minute phoning in of a beloved childhood holiday—no sense in that.  Instead I invoked the Cub scout motto, “Do your best”, which I deploy liberally to myself on various occasions, then carried on with my workload. 

The village parade was lovely and relaxed, thanks in great part to the DJ, Jeremy Moss, who kept the volume at a reasonable bop-to-the-beat but can-still-talk-to-your-friends level as opposed to the ear-splitting, frenzy-inducing, up-to-eleven volume and stress level of years past.  The costumes were fantastic—loved the doll in the box, the fried egg and dominos, the ice cream truck and 50 shades of grey.  I especially love it when parents dress up, too, and that there were two adults dressed as whoopee cushions.  The business owners all seemed game and happy to see the hoards.

When the sun went down Thursday and we headed out into the dark night for trick-or-treating—the pinnacle of the day’s litany of holiday themed events—I felt a deep gratitude for those who had picked up my slack.  On nearly every street in town, at the end of practically every walkway, was a magical front stoop.  Folks had put out ghouls and witches, reapers and goblins.  They had strung spider webs across porches and hung ghosts in bushes and trees.  And yes, they had carved exquisitely beautiful pumpkins then lit candles inside them, giving off that irrefutable glow of eerie wonder. 

I was so very grateful for my fellow townspersons who, in creating a magical experience for their own families, had inadvertently given us ours.   I wanted to leave little thank-you notes under every front door mat saying, “Thank you for hauling the bins down from the attic, for setting out the newspaper and stringing up the spider.  Thank you for the orange twinkling lights and the bubbling cauldrons, and for putting speakers in the front windows, like my dad used to do when he played the “Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House”—a Disneyland record put out in 1964 meant to scary the pants off of trick-or-treaters, which never did.

The rain turned to drizzle before leaving us alone, and the temperature was unseasonably balmy.  Parents everywhere wandered from house to house with a bounce in their steps and a breezy air of gratitude for the docile weather and semblance of normalcy that had been absent on recent Halloween’s.  Children ran from porch to porch with blithe abandon, anxious to feel the weight of their loot pulling further down on their arms.  Some parents even offered wine in teeny plastic cups, and cheese and crackers to the grown-ups—brief and appreciated respites from the rush.

 After houses began to run out of candy—one woman finally did after handing out 760 pieces—we ended up with other families at the home of friends.  Six or seven kids spread out their candy on living room footstools and floor rugs and they traded with each other as if it were the NY Stock Exchange.  To them it was, in a way, their candy as precious as any dumb commodity.  Outside us parents sipped wine or beer, enjoyed chairs, and traded stories about the costumes that gave us the biggest chuckles found on the internet and spotted at the parade.

Exhausted, my son and I made our way back up the hill and dragged ourselves past our faceless pumpkin, our cute decorations and into pajamas to get ready for bed.  We brushed out teeth more thoroughly than usual, then spoke our thanks out loud.  We said thank you for the weather and for our awesome little town.  Thank you for trick-or-treating and for fabulously scary house decorations.  Thank you for the hundreds of dollars some folks must have spent on candy and the generosity extended from their hearts to our kids’ grubby little hands.  Then we said thanks for Halloween and our friends, and the folks that make it magic.  Next year we’ll step up, too.

Aftermath

I’ve spent all the summers of my life so far in a little town on the Jersey Shore on what I now know is a barrier island.  My mom’s house is situated half way between the ocean and the bay on a three block wide piece of land.  For forty-something years I’ve felt a seismic shift in my consciousness and physical being when I smell the salt air, and I roll down my windows when I get close to the beach, even in the rain. 

On this recent visit to my summer home town, I was stopped by a National Guardsman in grey fatigues standing next to a matching fatigue-painted Hummer.  He reminded me of Madeline Kahn in High Anxiety when her pantsuit matched her Lincoln Continental.  He asked to see my papers—a copy of a tax document and a letter from my mother saying I had her permission to visit the house.  He checked my ID and waved me on. 

As I drove down familiar streets, nearly every house or business on both sides of the road had an 8-12 foot mountain of refuse on the curb consisted of all the major appliances, couches and cabinetry, rugs and flooring, all the contents from the basement, the insulation, and all the walls from the first floor of the house.  Except for my mom’s house. 

Friends had texted me photos of my mom’s house after the storm—friends who’d siphoned gasoline from one car into the other and braved the ominous smell of broken gas lines to survey the town before the National Guard declared Marshall Law and instilled a curfew to deter looters-- who were stealing by truck in the day and by boat at night.  Before the cacophony of dump trucks and helicopters grew to drown out the gently lapping waves at the beach; before homeowners 10 blocks south of us returned to their houses to find them gone—vanished-- just an empty lot of sand-- my friends let me know that my mom’s house was okay.  A good 7 steps up to the first floor porch, we had cleared the 4-foot flood-line by about 15 inches.

But I still had to see for myself.  The basement and garage would be a shitshow.  So once the gas rationing calmed the frenzied masses, I filled my car with cleaning supplies-- and donations for relief workers-- and headed down.  Mom’s house was fine.  I was overwhelmed with a mixture of gratitude and survivor guilt.  Yes, she would need a new furnace, water heater, electric panel and air-conditioning unit, but we were lucky-- very lucky.  As the town whirled with the buzz of construction workers and generators, I worked all day by myself to empty the basement.  A construction worker named, Bob,-- wearing leather gloves and rubber boots-- swung by to pump out the last 8” of water from the basement.  Around me men were doing similar jobs.  Strong, virile men were hooking up dehumidifier ducts as big as hoola-hoops.  They lifted great gobs of sodden insulation with front loaders while other men hacked at walls and floors with crowbars.  This must have been what it was like when gold mining towns were being built, or Las Vegas.  There was a barn raising feeling to the town now, everyone working at a common goal to get the community back on its feet—and I could sense us sweating together as I peeled off layers of clothing.  But as dusk turned the blue sky pink, an odd thing happened. 

All around me people had lost so much.  Their hearts ached.  They were exhausted and worn.  And yet, as the generators switched off and construction workers removed their gloves, all I could think of was---who can I make out with? 

I was aware of how wrong this was, this feeling of surging desire, but I couldn’t contain it.  “Maybe Construction Bob will make out with me,” I thought, as I ambled over to my car to check my hair in the side view mirror.  I may have been wearing rain pants over my jeans, snow boots and 2fleece tops, but I rocked it.

When his truck pulled up, the sky had darkened to denim blue.  No street lights had power, no cars could be heard and the air was perfectly still.  Curfew was in an hour.  “There’s time,” I thought.  And yet, Construction Bob did not linger long enough to let the post-apocalyptic aphrodisiac grip him and propel him towards me.  He did not seem to share my yearning to connect with someone on a deep, primal level.  He loaded his pump and left.  And with him went the only chance I would have to feel the skin of someone who knows what it’s like-- to be alone together on the outskirts of surreality.  Remote, removed and alive.

After he left I stood there for a few minutes.  Now I would have no one to make out with.   Then I remembered, I would still have to pass through the National Guard’s checkpoint on my way out of town.  You know what they say-- any port in an aftermath.

No Drinking, Texting, Driving

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I’m grateful every time I see or hear a “No Texting While Driving” public awareness campaign on the radio or television.  I have a friend who puts hers in the glove compartment when she drives.  I usually have mine on the passenger seat-- face down or in my purse-- and make a point to set my GPS before I start driving, occasionally pulling over to the side of the road if I need to make a call or adjustment.  But it’s hard to resist.

The PSAs remind me of the no drinking-and-driving campaigns of my high school years and the no littering campaigns before that.  It’s one of the many subtle, or I should say not so subtle nods to a bygone era that Madmen pays homage to when, for instance, Don Draper shakes out his families’ picnic blanket scattering trash on the park’s lawn before walking away-- or pours his pal a scotch before sending him home in his car.  My parent’s generation used to call them ‘one more for the road’.  We called them ‘roadies’.  Thank goodness the majority of today’s younger generation doesn’t fathom getting behind the wheel intoxicated any more that we would think to toss a bag of litter out the car window.

I was talking to my mother about this the other day when she told me a story.  She was just out of college, in the early 1960s, when she and her merry band of friends decided to take a weekend road trip down south to visit some other friends—a young couple who had just married.  Five of them were going—cars were enormous in those days—and everyone had an assigned job.  A different passenger was in charge of snacks, maps, entertainment, and drinks, etc.  I interrupted Mom’s story, “Was there anything non-alcoholic to drink?”  “No,” she said, “We drank the whole way down.  And sang.  The entertainment person had a list of car games and songs for us to sing.” 

“And the driver drank?” 

“Of course,” she said matter-of-factly.  I cringed.  Mom continued, “but you didn’t ask me what my job was.” 

“What was your job, Mother?”

“Decorations,” she said.  I had to laugh.  We both did.

“I taped up crepe paper all along the top of the car and blew up little balloons…” 

“On the outside of the car?” 

“No,” she said, “the inside.”  I pictured my mom arriving an hour before departure time in order to secure a decorative trim of twisted crepe paper along the upper corners of the car ceiling, small balloons bobbing along, grazing their heads as they sang.

“Good work, Mom,” I said, “and did you sing?”

“Of course.  We all sang the whole way.  In fact, at one point I remember my friend telling the driver to pull over.”

“Because the singing was so bad?’

“No, he said he was too drunk to sing, so he had better drive.”

“Good Lord,” I said, “Did you let him drive?”

“Of course.”  I covered my mouth and shook my head.

“I know,” she said, “We were idiots.  We’re lucky to be alive.”

“I’ll say.  We were idiots, too.  We’re all lucky.”

There must be a million stories out there--serendipitous idiots doing ridiculous things.  Thankfully, designated drivers and community garbage cans are a permanent fixture of our landscape now.  But I think about what else we’re doing now, cluelessly, that will turn out to be completely idiotic.  Certainly, there’s plenty I’m aware of, but what will shock me?  What stories will I recount for my adult son that will leave him agape and shaking his head?  I’ll be glad when texting-while-driving becomes a thing of the past.  I hope they come up with a device that hobbles texting or turns your phone to dust while your car is moving.   Until then, keep your wits about you and be en garde.  There are idiots among us, still.

Lice Lessons

My son asked, “When is lice season?” My friend replied, “It’s always lice season.”  She added, “but fall seems to be a big comeback time for them because everyone’s returning from camp.”  Lice love to camp.  Who doesn’t?  All those little louse-sized kayaks-- I get it.  I reached out to this particular friend because she’s something of an informal local authority.  She’s had the devious little beasts in her home four times and has managed to treat all of her children herself without having to shell out the big bucks to go to Lice Be Gone, the notable lice removal money-maker in Short Hills.  Not that there’s anything wrong with Lice Be Gone.  It would be my first stop, too, if I had that kind of cash burning a hole in my pocket.  They treat shoulder length hair or longer hair for $250 and boys-type short hair for $150/$175-- $30 just to screen or check. 

I asked my friend for a tutorial.  “First of all,” she said, “Rid doesn’t work and it’s got too many chemicals.”  I remembered Rid from my childhood.  Those were the days.  “And the comb must be metal.  I bought mine on the internet.”  Of course you did.  All the best stuff comes from the worldwide inter-web.  “Then you need a cheap white drugstore conditioner or you can buy ‘Lice B Gone’.”  I said, “Also in drugstores?”  “No, the internet but conditioner works just as well.  Glop it on thoroughly and then put on a shower cap for an hour.  Then you take a section of hair and comb it through in all four directions—from the north, south, east and west sides.  Because the louse eggs, or nits, only cling to one edge of the hair.”  Wow.  That’s some ingenious nano-tenacity.  “Then you dip the comb in a cup of rubbing alcohol and wipe it off on a clean white paper towel.  The nits will be visible on the towel, or, floating in the cup.”  Great visual, I thought.

“How long does the comb out take?” I asked.  I was already exhausted from just listening.  “One hour for short and/or thin hair, two hours or more for long or thick hair.  I give the kids an ipad.”  Or, I thought, anything by Dostoyevsky.  “Then you bag up pillows and stuffed animals for 2 weeks—lice need a host to survive-- and wash everything in super hot water and put it in the dryer on high heat for at least 30 minutes, and vacuum whatever the kid was sitting on and the area around it.”  “I hadn’t built this into my schedule,” I said.  “No one ever does,” she said.  This was starting to sound like it should be added to the List of Time-Suck Buzzkills along with fender-benders and root canal.  “And then you basically have to repeat the process 3-4 times until all of the nits are gone.”  “What if you miss one?” I asked, starting to feel itchy.  “Well then they’re not gone, are they?  Do it again.  You can basically kiss your week good-bye.  You’ll never get it back.” 

“Why do lice want to live on us?” I asked.  She said, “I don’t care enough about them to want to know.”  According to the CDC website, they suck our blood-- life’s tiniest vampires—to the tune of 6-12 million infestations a year.  I said, “Does this combing out time with your 3 kids yield a close family bonding experience?”  “I’m usually drinking and swearing while I’m combing out, but, sure.”  “That’s your zen approach?”  I asked.  She said, “The first time I got them I cried.”  I said, “You yourself got lice?”  “Yup.”  I reached up and scratched my head then quickly regretted it.  One of the moms of a kid who attended my son’s backyard birthday party called the day after with news.  Apparently her child had caught lice from another friend at a sleepover the night before.  Fabulous, I thought, then emailed all the parents of my son’s party guests. 

I asked my friend, “What’s the biggest mistake people make about treating lice?”  She glowered.  “Not telling other people.  YOU MUST TELL.  You can’t be embarrassed.  You’ve got to tell all the parents of the kids your kid has been in contact with for at least a week.  And you have to keep treating it.  One treatment isn’t going to do it.  YOU MUST KEEP TREATING until you find nothing.  There’s a policy in schools where if you treat the kids only once they can return, but I think there should be a ‘No Nits’ policy.”  “You’re hard core,” I said.  She looked at me with comic skepticism.  “Have you had lice in your home?” she said.  I answered, “Not since I was a kid.”  “Your son hasn’t had lice, yet?”  “No.”  “Well, consider yourself lucky.  For now.”  She shook her head and smiled in a just-you-wait way.  I said, “I’ve heard that lice like clean hair and we only shampoo twice a week in our house.”  “That’s why?”  “No, we just naturally tend towards filthiness.  We’re like the French.”  She laughed and said, “Excellent.”

It was time to wrap up my tutorial.  She told me that I would have to wait and see a few days if my son got lice from the birthday party kid.  In the meantime I should use some sort of naturally scented spray deterrent I could buy at Whole Foods, but if a louse made it onto his head or mine, it only needed to lay one egg.  I told her I understood.  As I was leaving, I asked, “Is there anything worse than lice?”  “Yeah,” she said, “bedbugs.”  We both shuddered.  Enough said.

The Parent Calendar

Happy New Year!  At least that’s what my friend proposes and I think it’s a grand idea.  Why shouldn’t the new year begin on September 1st?  This month is brimming with newness, while January 1^st seems little more than an arbitrary Hallmark holiday invented by champagne promoters and limousine services.  I get that the Greeks in their spooky wisdom dreamt up the calendar that we use today working off the Roman, Julian and Gregorian calendars’ tweaks.  I’m sure the calendar nerds of their time were inspired by the lunar phases and possibly nudged by the farming seasons and certainly not Dick Clark’s whims nor a concern for keeping the sequin trade alive.  But ours is not the only calendar out there—the Hebrew, Hindu, Burmese and Buddhists all have their own calendars, to name just a few.  So I’m proposing another calendar, one that begins on the first day that all your children go back to school: The Parent Calendar.

The new year of The Parent Calendar begins the moment that your last child rounds a corner and is out of sight after the bell rings.  Each drop-off mom and dad in North America throws up a handful of biodegradable confetti in the very spot where they stand although some parents drop to their knees, weeping.  A rolling cavalcade of cheering and whooping can be heard throughout the land between 8:10am and 9:15am in every time zone while the FCC commandeers all radio stations and has them play “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” by Dinah Washington.  All leaf blowers are duly hobbled for the day so that stay-at-home parents may go directly home and take a nap and drink carts roll up and down the aisles of all the major commuter trains and busses where free margaritas and mimosas are passed out to all the working parents, courtesy of the board of education.

This celebratory mood of levity and relief following the Parents’ New Year doesn’t last long, however.  Almost immediately The Parent Calendar begins to buckle under the oppressive weight of The Sports Calendar.  With new classes and teachers, the new year ushers in familiar homework struggles and age-old battles over daily electronics usage.  Autumn leaves will soon obscure the last remnants of confetti absorbed into the damp, muddy ground, and leaf blowers will ruin all potential opportunities for peaceful work-from-home days. 

But, buck up, parents.  You still have a good week of New Year’s celebration ahead of you.  The weather is cool and crisp and there are no science projects due for at least a month.  This is The Parent Calendar’s golden time: after the humidity has left the air for good and before you have to switch your family over to fall clothes; after the mosquitoes have all died or flown south for the winter and before you have to worry about ordering holiday cards; after the pool closes—sadly—but before the first frost.  It’s a new year, parents.  Make it a happy one.

Family Camp

I’d never been to camp until last week.  I was a town pool/Jersey Shore kid in the summer, so, to me, camp was a vague compendium of friends’ September stories and the coming-of-age angst and hijinx of movies like “Dirty Dancing” and “Meatballs.”  I had a spotty knowledge of something called color wars and understood the desperation for care packages but that was about it.  There seemed to be an awful lot of sneaky behavior that took place at camp, and many firsts—cigarettes, kisses, shaved legs-- but I had to take it all with a grain of salt.  Who knew what really went on?  These tales were legend, but my imagination only went so far.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the town pool and the Jersey Shore, but it was time to mix things up a bit, show my son a variety of the panoply of summertime options that our great nation has to offer.  Last year I heard my California cousin talking about something called “family camp.”  Apparently she, her husband, and three kids all went to sleep-away camp together and had a blast.  So in June, I Googled “family camp New England” and found three options.  Of course they were booked back in January, but I cold-called them all and asked to be put on a wait list in case anyone cancelled last minute.  Someone did.

Off we went to YMCA family camp on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.  Wow, was it beautiful!  60 or so cabins dotted the edge of the lake so that everyone had a view of either the sunset or moonrise.  Ours was teensy—just big enough for 2 twin beds and a small night table between us.  Our amenities totaled 1 lamp, 1 fan, a broom and 2 blankets each—plus all the spiders you could successfully ignore.  The windows opened easily and the screens had no holes; the cross-breeze was cool and lovely.  The lodge and dining hall buildings were large, shingled, wooden affairs with high, beamed ceilings and long, wide porches with ample tables and chairs.  Footpaths crisscrossed the tree-shaded grounds connecting every possible camp game you can imagine from shuffleboard to air hockey and all the leisure and competitive ball sports in between.  The tiny store sold requisite ice cream, swag and candy bars and loaned out ping-pong balls and board games.  None of the courts were closed for repair and all the games had all the parts.

For meals, campers were assigned to a table for the week—like a cruise—and took turns picking up platters of family style camp food and taking each other’s dirty dishes up to the window.  The salad bar was varied and could augment any craving for greens beyond the typical parade of carbs.  We got to know the other families at our table, who had been coming to this family camp on the same week every year for 41, 37 and 16 years respectively.  We learned that after the first year, a family is grandfathered in if they choose to return and might have the same cabin, year after year until they die, at which point it’s offered to their kids.  The older gentleman next to me pointed to a thirtyish mom with three young kids and told me that he’s known her since she was an infant—for one week a year, for her whole life. 

After dinner on the first night, my son and I signed up at the big board for some tournaments: backgammon, chess and mother-son bocce, ping-pong and shuffleboard.  There were others, but we were going to ease into things.  There was also a talent show sign-up on Thursday night.  My son took off to join a gaggle of other pre-tweens lining up for foursquare and I headed to the craft shop.  Just behind the outdoor lending library, a one-room building stood—the front facing wall completely made of windows.  Inside were 6 long, wide tables, loads of little stools, and on the walls every conceivable color of bead, gimp, paint, dye, kind of leather, metal, pliers, hammers, brushes, chisels-- all the craft supplies you could imagine.  I’d died and gone to heaven.

I learned that in the mornings, after breakfast, the kids would be heading off to “program” where they would be swept away by peppy counselors to do camp stuff with other kids their age until lunch time when they joined their parents again.  They might swim or kayak, water ski or canoe, tie-dye, play tennis or hike.  It was at that time that parents took a yoga class or did boot camp, and when the craft shop was blissfully quiet.  I made a beeline for the soldering tools and leather stamps, where time flew by for me until the lunch bell rang and I ran back to meet my son. 

The afternoons were free to do as much or as little as you wanted and after dinner the counselors organized games of capture the flag and softball, movie nights and dances.  By Tuesday I met a violinist, clarinetist and guitar player who had brought their musical instruments.  We rehearsed a few times then performed a song as a seasoned quartet for Thursday night’s show, which by then had a robust line up of annual favorites—hams one and all.  Some of the tournaments fell apart-- which was fine with me—and my son won the chess after beating out only two others.  We watched the end of the week triathlons, cheering on our new friends, and then packed up our cabin and swept. 

Our week of camp was as exciting as it was relaxing.  The sound of the lake lapping just feet from my pillow has followed me home and lulls me to sleep.  I know that my son’s experience was not the same as being away from one’s parents, but he may still do that someday.  And I know that as a parent at camp with my kid, I missed the “real camp” boat and that it’s nothing like what my friends remember.  But now I have camp memories, too, of dirty hair and bug juice.  I think we’ll go back.  And back.