SLIMMER PLEASURES

Off To Cam

S

oon, we will take our
daughter to camp. She's
eleven and this will be her
third summer of sleep-
away camp. She's cocky, confident
and ready to go. She deeply want-
ed to go to camp, even the first
time, but she may not remember
her first few minutes there.
I, on the other hand, will nev-
er forget them. She was nine. We
drove her to camp, took her to the
sign-in desk, deposited her trunk
and duffel bag in the luggage area,
hugged her kissed her, told her
we loved her, and left. Leaving
was the hard part.
She waved wanly, briefly
clutched a porch column, and

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Camp packing and good-byes are
1 difficult for mom and camper

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then walked up the wooden steps.
I blew kisses and kept smiling un-
til we drove out of sight, around
the bend on the lakeside road.
Then I got weepy.
I spent most of that summer try-
ing to imagine her activities. Wak-
ing up with the bugle, making her
own bunk, eating kosher meals in
the mess hall, swimming in the
icy mountain lake, riding horses,
learning nature crafts (the world
needs more lanyards), singing
around the campfire, and writing
letters home. Especially writing
letters home. I figured that if she
wrote to me the very minute we
drove out of sight, I should get the
letter two days later. I wasn't sure
I could last that long. Then I got
the letter: Dear Mom, Camp is
good. Love.
We could only hope she was
having a great time; we knew she
was equipped with great
stuff. As is true this year, the
camp issues a list of items

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ERICA MEYER RAUZIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

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for kids to bring that would equip
an army unit for six weeks, active
duty in Borneo. Sleeping bag.
Flashlight (she took five). Hiking
boots, riding boots, sneakers, san-
dals, beach thongs, thick socks,
thin socks, jeans and shorts, T-
shirts, beach shirts, sleep shirts,
hair brush and toothbrush, soap
and shampoo, hankies and blan-
kets and more.
Each year, the preparation al-
most does me in. Every item has
to be chosen with care and labeled
with precision. My daughter takes
the camp's list completely literal-
ly. Because the list says 12 T-shirts,
neither 13 nor 11 will do. We
count every sock and sweat shirt.
Her attitude is that once an item
has been identified for camp,
name-tagged for camp and placed
in the camp trunk, it is absent for
all other practical purposes.
The following dialogue, and
others on a similar track, takes
place innumerable times in the
weeks before camp:
Child: "Mom, I need a new
bathing suit."
Mom: "There's one in your
trunk."
Child: "It's for camp."
Mom: "Camp is in three
weeks; it'll be dry by then."
Child, patient, weary: "It's for
camp."
Mom, patient, weary: "Swim-
ming in it today won't make any
difference in being able to use it
later. Go ahead; wear the suit."
Child: "It's for camp."
Once items go into that trunk,
they clearly occupied a parallel uni-
verse, a netherworld, removed

from ordinary access. They be-
come science fiction items: Visi-
ble, touchable, but totally useless.
My daughter stays innately
calm throughout the entire pre-
liminary process, packing her
stuffed rabbit as matter-of-factly as
her pre-stamped, pre-addressed
postcards. Her serenity is some-
times pierced by moments of pan-
ic, my (internal) panic is
sometimes pierced by moments
of serenity.
As carefully as we nurture
wings as well as roots, indepen-
dence as well as identity, it is hard
to see her grow up and fly away.
We want this, we parents. This
large transition to separate-per-
sonhood is necessary and natural.
And we can handle it. I think.
I always hope that her letters
will fill us in on her life at camp,
but what we usually get is,
"Camp's fine." In reality, she
knows the rich details of the camp
part of her life, but we do not.
That first summer, when she
was 9, I knew she was still young
enough to sit in the car, at the
gates of the camp, and proclaim
tearfully, "You just think I'm go-
ing to get out of the car. I'm not
going."
But I didn't know she was old
enough to dry her eyes, kiss her
grandparents, walk with me to the
porch, and go.
As we drove off, the small fig-
ure in the lavender shirt and the
new overalls waved goodbye, re-
leased the porch column she had
been clinging to, and walked up
the steps, climbing into a life en-
tirely her own. ❑