Summer Camp

Hello and welcome to a summer camp Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is June 27th.

Camps are a summer hallmark and staple. We have 4-H camps, church camps, sports camp, and the camp of all camps - LAKETRAILS - slotted in our summer schedule. Camps conjure images of singing around bonfires, capture the flag, bracelet braiding, KP duty, group activities in the lodge on a rainy afternoon, cannonballs and canoes, and chatting with your camp BFFs well past lights out. Good times that fuel adult nostalgia.

Except when it doesn't quite go that way.

Sometimes, instead of temporary unconditional love, bonding, and memories, kids get outcasted and labeled as awkward, quirky, or a misfit. This was my fear as I dropped my kid off last Sunday.

"Everyone looks older than me," she observed, as we stood in line to check in. I assured her it was a camp just for 9th and 10th graders. After check-in with several cheerful volunteers, we were escorted to her dorm room - and that's where I started to panic.

The first thing I noticed was a cot placed between two regular beds. The cot stood low to the floor. It was no surprise when I learned the other two roommates had already claimed the better beds.

I watched my daughter introduce herself to the other girls. Perky and bright - capitalizing on the few personal qualities she inherited from me. I watched the other girls receive the introduction, a hooded-lid look reminding me of James Spader's bad-guy Steffan from Pretty in Pink. A look that could mean polite indifference at best. I didn't want to think about the worst.

The two girls already knew each other, and that was enough to make them fast friends for the week.

Who puts girls in odd numbers? I thought to myself. Hadn't they read the articles that concluded girls do better in even numbers? I gulped and eased out of the room to take a phone call from the Youngest while my girl did her best to interact with her new roomies.

"I'm worried," I told her sister, whom I had called as soon as I was back on the road. My mama heart sensed that, while this situation didn't have full-on Mean Girl potential, there was a certain Mean Girl-esque aura of potential my sixth-sense, spidey senses were picking up.

This wasn't my first mom rodeo with a kid coming home from camp declaring, "Never make me do that again."

"She'll be fine," her sister assured me. "She knows how to find her people."

And then I called her brother, the one who had had the bad camp experience. "My fear is that she'll try to attach herself to these girls who don't want her hanging around," I said to him. "She'll find her people," he said.

Encouraged by the assurances of not one, but two, of my other children (My Kid Advice Council, or KAC, for short), I waited out the week. I decided I wouldn't call the camp directors, but instead be ready to receive a call. 

A call never came.

On Thursday, I was back at camp to pick her up. As I was looking for her, we surprised ourselves by bumping into each other - literally - in the dining hall, "Oh! Hi, Mom!" she said brightly. I hugged her tightly, and she hugged me tightly back.

"How was it?" I asked, searching her expression and the corners of her eyes for a dam of tears ready to break.

"It was awesome. I'm so glad I came!"

I hugged her again, relief flooding through my body.

She beamed and babbled about all the great things she experienced that week as we made our way to her dorm room to pick up her stuff. I noted the roommates had already vacated. I watched as she made promises to one girl to see her during swim season. I beamed with my own pride when another girl walked up, displaying writing in black magic marker on her forearm. "This is your phone number, right?"

I felt a tinge of a wince - "cringe" as the kids say - when my daughter said to her, "Thanks for sitting by me during the activity. It was nice that Phil sat by me, but, well, he's a boy." And relaxed in gratitude when the girl answered with equal earnestness, "Yeah, sure. I can imagine how that would feel awkward, sitting by yourself and then a boy sits by you, even if it was just Phil - who's the best - but, well, you know." 

My reaction, I think, spoke more to my own girlhood fears of appearing cool and likable. But my mama heart loved that there was another human being out there, at this camp, a girl her age, who was just like my daughter.

"How did it go with your roommates?" I asked on the drive home. 

"It was fine," she said. in that tone that told me there was more to the story. "Oh, they were definitely fancy pants girls. But I just did what I had to do. I found my own friends."

Then she regaled me with all the itty-bittiest details of a wonderful camp experience all the way home.