While the kids are away, parents....

ERICA RAUZIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

If I told you that two of my three children went to camp, you'd think I had a pretty lazy summer. That would certainly be your impression if you knew that kid number three, the oldest, age 17, managed her own summer at her grandparents' house. I should have felt footloose and fancy-free.

Well, I felt pretty free about the oldest. We talked constantly. I'm in and out of Grandma-town often and she was fine. But actually, I stayed very busy with the two who were at camp. They were out of sight, indeed, but they were not out of mind.

First, there was the mail. I watched the mailbox with intensity, with the fervor of a high school senior waiting to hear from Harvard.

On the flip side, I kept the post office busy. I sent daily (or nearly daily) letters, often padded with small goodies. I sent packages weekly. This required some shopping, planning and shlepping. The children were glad to get practical things in their packages. They appreciated the batteries and the extra film.

But, to them, the reason for the packages was the junk food and candy. I refused to mail actual bottles of soda, but gum, chocolates, sour candies and tubes of chips – all kosher, of course – found their way into the mail. This means that homecoming was a rude awakening. At home, we never have sour candy because it is extra horrible for teeth. The rule at home is that they can have gum only when they are alone in their rooms, or during takeoffs and landings. We do have chocolates and chips at home, but only on a limited-access, after-meals basis.

Every now and then, the kids sent a camp-mailing request that took some extra effort: a magnetic dartboard, a new pillow, nails and a hammer, and off I went questing to the store again.

Camp visiting days also occupied our time last summer. Our daughter's camp simply closed for three days between the first and second summer sessions and, because it is near the aforementioned grandparents' home, we all went there for a swell reunion. Our son's camp, in the middle of nowhere in the middle of New England, had a 9:30 to 4:30 visiting day for which we happily travelled a full day before and a full day after.

I stayed busy after his visiting day sending him requested items and replaying the whole day in my head. My knees replayed it, too, because we spent the day following the schedule of a 10-year-old, at sports camp. We went to watch him play basketball, soccer and roller hockey. We watched him ride a mountain bike, climb a rock wall and swim in a freezing lake.

I don't know how he had the energy to participate in all the jumping, running, kicking, swimming, skating and climbing – just getting to each activity wore me out. We also discovered an interesting geological paradox: at this camp, everything was uphill. Nothing was downhill. Even when we were returning from uphill locations, the path was still uphill. You've heard of global warming, this is uphill phenom is due to progressive global tilting, I'm sure of it. My husband and I discovered a similar phenomenon camping out this year, the earth is not only getting warmer, it is getting firmer – just try sleeping on it, and you'll agree that we are also experiencing global hardening.

We've also discovered that it takes a fair amount of parental attention to dodge problems at camp. We had to be sure our allergic daughter got her shots. We had to follow up after visiting day to ascertain that the kid on our son's sports team who was being unkind got some extra, shall we call it, adult attention. It is difficult to get even the most willing camp unit head on the telephone; they are busy running around 500 acres and the secretaries are all 15 years old, and nobody at camp, as far as I can tell, carries a pager or a cellphone.

In the city, we carry cellphones when we are going to be one house away, down the street. At camp, they apparently have no way to fetch someone who is in the back 40 acres except to run there, or to relay messages through a stream of little boys (akin to playing broken telephone, but less reliable).

I guess in a dire emergency, they'd take the lone golf cart, but for routine messages, the slip of paper goes in their office box and you wait. This is probably as it should be; these folks are at camp to do stuff with kids, not to pat anxious parents on the head. However, if you are not in place when the call back finally comes, you wait another 24 hours until the mail box gets checked again. This is a slow pace for a perturbed parent, but I am trying to, as the kids say, "chill."

I had some certainty that while I waited, fretted and paced, doing my parent number, my children were swimming, running and shooting baskets. Oblivious, as well they should be, to how busy I was while they were at camp.

Erica Rauzin is a freelance writer living in Florida.

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