The first time I went to overnight camp I was 9 years old. I don’t remember having any particular desire either to go or not go. It was just what 9-year-old little girls from Chicago’s North Shore did. For two months! Two months! That was a really long time for my 9-year-old self to be away from home, and I wasn’t ready.
I spent a good portion of that summer sobbing alone in my upper bunk. I wanted to go home. I remem- ber promising my dad that if he’d just let me come home, I was amenable to all sorts of torturous events. I would do the dishes after every meal. I would snow blow the walk every single time it snowed once winter arrived. I would even let my cloying Aunt Frieda hug and kiss me to her heart’s content. But no dice. My parents stood firm. I was there for the duration whether I liked it or not.
I went back to overnight camp a second summer. It was en- tirely against my will and I literally went kicking and scream- ing. My mother insisted I go. Certain she wanted me gone so she could take over my closet with her overflowing collection of expensive designer togs, I set out to make her summer every bit as miserable as I was sure mine was going to be. Armed with a stack of Holly Hobby stationery, a package of Bic pens and Art Linkletter’s newest book, Letters From Camp – a twist on his bestseller Kids Say the Darnd- est Things – I was
determined to have my mother crying for mercy as she and my dad hopped the first plane to Wisconsin to save their youngest
daughter from the perils of the Northwoods.
I spent hours carefully calculating which letter to copy and send home each day. There was the one about catching malaria from my bunkmate, the one about my unfortunate horseback riding accident that sent my beloved horse to the glue factory; I even included the somewhat predictable epic about the violent kidnapping of my one and only camp friend, a loner from Pomona with a propensity for lice infestations and with whom I shared all of my hats, hairbrushes and pillows. I sent a letter a day, every day, for eight weeks. The thing
is, it started to be really fun. I liked sending my daily treatises, imagining my parents’ faces as they perused each letter, not quite sure if it was real or a mere figment of my tortured imagination. I started to share my letter writing escapades with my cabin mates. They thought it was fun too. Every day after lunch we would retreat to our cabin for rest time, and I would regale my compadres with various Linkletter entries. Then we would vote on which one to send to my poor unsuspecting parents.
A funny thing started to happen to me that summer. I started to connect to people, to make real friends, friends who thought I was funny and clever and just a little bit quirky. I had found my first audience and I was loving it. Suddenly camp became a special place where I could let my hair down, be myself and explore my newfound creativity. I grew to love my summers in Eagle River, WI, and went back for 10 consecutive years. My parents forgave me for tor- turing them. My mom even started to laugh about the letters I’d sent that second summer.
My 12-year-old son, Levi, first ventured to overnight camp when he was 9 years old. He first went for 12 days and was immediately smitten by the energy, joy and Judaism that defines Jewish summer camps.
He went back the next two summers for equally wonderful 12-day sessions. Still scarred by my own eight-week camp stretches, I never pressed him to go longer. But this summer he’s going for a full month. He couldn’t be more excited. My youngest son, Eli, always insisted that he would never leave home, a declaration I was pretty sure he’d outgrow, but since you can never be sure, I did have some concerns. When talk of summer came up this past fall, Eli surprisingly decided, with a bit of parental nudging, that he too would like to fly up to wine country and experience life away from home for a few days. He’s attending a short, 12-day camp session in June. He’s definitely more apprehensive about it than his brother ever was. But just beyond the fear, I can sense an excitement about venturing off on his own and experiencing what his brother has labeled “the most incredible place in the universe.”
I still have my collection of Art Linkletter books packed away in our garage somewhere. It might be fun to pull them out and share my mischievous letter-writing escapades with my kids before their summer sessions begin. But, come to think of it, that might inspire copycat behavior that would ultimately bring me down. I realize now how precious those camper letters really are to parents. Just a few scribbled words before running off to play mean more than any kid can imagine.
I tell my kids that they don’t have to write me letters from camp. Though I write to them daily. It’s a habit I started the first summer Levi went away. But I want them to have fun, to be happy and carefree. The last thing I want to do is saddle them with the responsibility of having to write home. Plus, maybe I’m just a little afraid that there’s a heap of karmic mail floating around in the universal post office that really does deserve to find its way back to my doorstep as some kind of payback.
So I think I’ll keep my Linkletter books safely packed away and my Allan Sherman CD with the infamous “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” song locked in my armoire until they’re a few years older, say maybe in their 30s, with kids of their own. After all, it’s not until then that we start to really appreciate our own parents and feel sorrow for the silly, stupid, selfish things we did when we were little. ␣
