Sleepaway Camp Is Not for the Faint of Heart
The kids are back, and I’m still recovering
She stands frozen on the top step of the coach bus, face streaming with tears. She is causing a bottleneck between the overtired, over-sugared kids and their anxiously waiting parents. There is a charge building in the air and I wonder if all forty-two pounds of her minus the water weight she’s shed in tears is about to get shoved off the bus.
I haven’t seen my children in twelve days.
During these twelve days, I scour the camp’s social media and stalk the mail carrier, searching for any shred of evidence that they are enjoying sleepaway camp.
I also take luxuriously long walks and read entire novels, but still.
During these twelve days, I receive two letters: one from my son (12) and the other from my daughter (9).
My son writes that he lost his goggles, which was totally not his fault, and asks us to Amazon Prime a new pair to camp.
We do, and I kind of hate myself for it.
My daughter writes about how she passed the swim test and the activities she selected for her choice periods. She sounds optimistic.
And alive.
During these twelve days, the camp posts to their social media exactly four times.
Three of these posts are photographs of staff and weird, shaky Blair Witch Project-style movie clips from emo media campers about jibbitz, which for some irrational reason I’m not even sure of myself, lowkey annoys me.
One. One of these posts is a photograph of my daughter performing at the talent show, singing and playing the ukulele for the entire camp.
She has an adorable beaded braid in her hair.
An excellent sign.
From my end, the past twelve days have been this unsettling mixture of child-free euphoria and pit of my stomach maternal anxiety.
We practically had to remortgage our house to afford this camp.
They better freaking like it.
A bit about me: I despised sleepaway camp.
At eight years old, my freshly divorced parents shipped me out for a month during which time my home away from home was the camp infirmary. Homesickness manifested in a multitude of different ways and during Visitor’s Day, I begged them to take me home.
They didn’t.
And in those days, they couldn’t even Amazon Prime me a crocheted emotional support pickle.
Look it up, it’s a thing.
Hanna — whose parents owned a candy emporium — stole my favorite jean shorts.
Sheffie gave me lice. And worms. (Can you give someone worms? She definitely gave me worms.)
Everyone was always trying to pick me up because I was the smallest.
Then there was the issue of Lindsay’s undiagnosed lactose intolerance coupled with the tall glasses of milk she enjoyed with every meal.
I was the bunk below hers.
Cohabitating with a group of feral girls under the supervision of teenagers with underdeveloped prefrontal cortices was simply not for me.
Today, I’d be identified as an overstimulated introvert with problems at home. I’d have some kind of care plan involving scheduled quiet time and a camp social worker assigned to my case.
But alas, this was the early nineties, so in lieu of care plans and social workers, I was given a paper bag in which to hyperventilate, and an underlying message to toughen up.
But my daughter is not me.
She is an exuberant, athletic, creative kid. She is addicted to company. She can’t be alone for more than twenty seconds without pacing the house and disrupting anyone she encounters, jonesing for her next dopamine hit.
She is built for camp. She is enthusiastic about everything and I mean eve-ry-thing.
One time she came through the door and immediately noticed we’d painted the peeling yellow kitchen cabinets a crisp white and squealed, “OH MY GOD THIS IS AMAZING!”
So why then is this child, my daughter, that kid — the one standing at the top of the bus seeping liquid from her eye holes?
The kids behind her, practically humming with excited energy to reunite with their families are now impatiently contorting their sunburned, impetigo limbs to sidestep around my kid and disembark.
Finally, the building pressure coughs her forward and with her head down she clamps onto my waist and floods my sundress.
What have we done?
She hated it.
We’ve traumatized her.
Never trust what you see on social media.
The rich kid has stolen her favorite jean shorts.
“Mommy,” she sniffs. “Mommy.” She exhales my name like I am her crocheted emotional support pickle.
How much therapy will my benefits cover?
Will she write stories about her summer camp trauma on Substack when she’s grown?
Should I get paper bags for us both?
“Mommy,” she repeats again.
Finally, she looks up at me with her sad, almond-shaped glistening brown eyes.
“What’s wrong, Sweetie?” I ask, heartbroken, holding out her tiny, hiccupping shoulders in my hands to get a proper look at her.
“Mommy,” she chokes.
“I want to go back.”
This story originally appeared in Frazzled.
Sleepaway camp isn’t really a thing here in Australia (maybe because there are too many deadly animals 🤪) so I’ve only learned about it from the movies. I always thought it looked like so much fun! I’d be like you though - wondering every waking moment if my kids were coping. So glad your daughter had a good time (happy tears good) 😊
I so looked forward to sleep away camp and then my dad became the director of camp the week I was there. My parents and younger sister stayed on the grounds. Fortunately, I had no contact with my mom or younger sister. Minimal contact with my dad--except when he was making pronouncements to the whole camp, and my older sister who was in a different cabin group.
I had so many friends at camp, I never felt alone and sad. I managed to have a great time and made sure my kids had a camp experience when it was there turns.