My mother claims she didn’t cry at all when she sent me off to camp for the first time.
Well.
My girls left early this morning. A hot mess of shy and excited, nervous and anticipating. I thought I’d be fine but just watching them head off to what was surely going to be a great adventure… my eyes started to fill and the lump in my throat swelled to a size too large to swallow without a little gasp for air.
I went to camp all through my childhood, from the summer I turned 8. Long weeks in the Catskills playing jacks and volleyball and reading comic books. Canteen nights and dances. Color War. I can still remember the words of my team’s Color War anthem (set to “China Grove”): “Oh we’re talking about Seminole… woah oh! Oh wa oh! Let’s go Seminole!”
I have a million memories of camp and while I’m sure I loved to complain about the food and mosquitoes and bunk politics at the time (me being me, even at the age of eight) several decades later I remember it all with a fond haze and realize that those were some of the best times of my childhood.
And I’m just so happy my girls will get to experience a piece of that this summer. So hopeful all goes well. That they make friends, that they try new experiences, that they learn about themselves and painful as it is to say, that they do it all WITHOUT ME. Because of course that is a part of it. Being on your own, away from parents.
I probably won’t sleep for the whole time they are gone, with the wondering. It’s just cruel that they couldn’t bring cell phones.
PS: We used a TON of Mabel’s Labels on our all our camp gear. I’m so glad we were gifted labels by the company whom we’ve known and written about several times over the past few years. I had to pack up in a day and it honestly wouldn’t have been possible without the labels. I’m hopeful that some of the new clothes we bought might even come back with the kids.
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