Why is it that every one of us parents hated going to Sunday school (whether it be Hebrew school, CCD, or otherwise) when we were kids and yet we all insist on putting our own kids through the same torture? what is it that makes us want to subject them to waking up early on their much cherished Sunday and schlep all the way to church/temple/synagogue basement/whatever to listen to some bearded old man or an old lady with support hose babble on and on for hours about some useless bit of ancient history. Although I don’t know why we do it…I do know that each and every one of us does it.

Our kids get up and go and we drive them and everyone complains throughout the early morning drive and yet, everyone goes along with the program. Are we brainwashed? Is it in our genes? Instinct? Learned helplessness? What is it?

So funny to hear my kids talk about their experiences at Sleep-away camp. I eavesdrop on their conversations with their friends and realize that although the years may be vastly different and the names have changed, the stuff their talking about is the same stuff we talked about close to forty years ago when I went to camp. Color war, the apache relay, raids and first kisses. Overnights and canoe trips. And mostly just hanging out with your friends late into the night.

There is something so special about camp and the friendships you forge that transcends time and place. With technology moving ahead at break-neck speed, it’s nice to know that some things remain the same. Whether you went to camp in the fifties, the eighties or you came home just two weeks ago, and whether your camp was in the Poconos or the Berkshires or up in Maine, you speak the same language, you can relate on so many levels and you went through the same special experience. It is a club. A club whose members share childhood memories that will last them a lifetime.

Just by reading the title of this article, you instantly know which category you fall into. Are you the Jersey shore type or part of the Hamptons crowd? Can you hang on the beach, play in the sand, ride a couple of good waves and then do it all again the next day and the day after that without boredom setting in? Without third degree sunburns taking hold? Well, you probably guessed it–I can’t…I’m a lake person all the way. Give me the Berkshires any day over the shore. I’ll choose a late afternoon swim in a spring fed lake or an early morning hike by a babbling stream every time over scorching hot sand en route to a mud-colored ocean.

What can I say…we’re all just products of our childhood. Mine was spent up in the Berkshires every summer at Sleep-away camp. Fishing and sailing, soccer games and capture the flag. Nature walks and salamanders and tadpole and frog hunting in cattail bordered ponds. Hanging with my friends in the cool shadows under the tree canopies. Day trips to waterfalls and swinging on ropes into crystal clear pools of mountain water. Swimming out in the lake to the floating docks to hang out in the sun all day. Canoe trips down river rapids. Hiking up scenic trails to take in mountaintop views of the valley below. camping out under the stars. Cooking up the fish we caught. Late night raids into girls camp. Staying up late into the night talking and laughing with my friends.

Hmmm… beach or country….sorry I’ll take the country–the Berkshires–all day long.

It’s different when you are an adult… As a kid you go to Sleep-away camp and everything is taken care of for you, you don’t have to clean or pick up the branches that fell in the storm and after your time at the camp is over you go home with no worries… and next year when you come back you know that it will all be there, just the way you left it… But it’s different when you are an adult…
Sometimes you need to actually get something you always thought you wanted to realize how much you never really needed it. That’s how I feel about a country house I just sold. I always dreamed of that quaint little place in the country. The one with the white picket fence that’s just a short bike ride from a cute little general store. Or the country house that has the sprawling backyard that rolls right into a cyrstal clear New England lake with a couple of canoes tied to an overhanging tree limb. Guess what? I had them both. Granted at different times in my life and in different states but the theme was the same. They were nothing but a huge pain.

You arrive in the country house and are greeted by a gauntlet of cobwebs, dried up bugs, dust and dirt and end up spending the first few hours cleaning just enough so you can sleep. You wake up to the chores that await you outside–the tree limbs that fell, the weeds that have grown into the walkway bricks, the gopher holes, the raccoons that did a number on the trash, the squirrels that are trying relentlessly to get into the attic. You get the idea. Then its time to call the guy to check on the quality of the well water or is it the guy who has to check on the septic system??

Are we having fun yet? Has the fun started because if it has I’m not sure I’m experiencing it. By the way, have I added the mortgage payments, insurance premiums, real estate taxes and utility bills to the mix? Try the heating bills that go into keeping the pipes from freezing. You get the idea? And with all that money going out, talk about the pressure you feel to use the place. If the kids want to hang at home for a weekend I end up getting mad that we’re not using our country place.

So what was the best thing about our places in the country? The day of the closings when I signed over the deeds and changed the utilities out of my name. Now if we want to go to the country, we make a couple of calls and book a great country inn.

So the kids are home from Summer camp and along with the loads of dirty laundry come their stories and boy are they worth the twelve loads of wash. The intercamp games and who scored and who pitched and the play by play commentary and then the color war stories and then what I’ve been waiting for al along—the nitty gritty details about the girlfriends. The banquet, what they wore, how they picked them up, where they sat, did they dance and then I come in for the kill—did they kiss. Of course, I cannot in good conscience reveal the answer in this blog, but then again, neither did my boys reveal the answer to me. Isn’t it terrible when your kids exhibit more couth than the parent in the house? How awful of me to ask, and how gentlemanly of them NOT to answer. But come on, doesn’t every parent want to know?

So having just gotten back from visiting my boys at sleep away camp. I am sitting at my desk and rethinking the day. I had not seen them in just three weeks and already they have grown. I’m not sure if physically but certainly they appear older, they act older. Some new phrases and words have slipped into their vocabulary. They have made new friends that I only met for the first time. They have inside jokes that are even more inside than the ones they shared with their friends at home. They have dates for the banquet and I have to beg for them to point out their girlfriends. I sit and wonder what that term — girlfriend — means at their age. I think back to my childhood to the age they’re at now and try to remember my first girlfriend. It’s an exciting time for them. They are on their own making theri own decisions and fending for themselves. Out in the world (a small mini world at that) without parents telling them what to do.

After lunch towards the end of visiting day, we sat for a while on the grass overlooking the lake. We laid back and stared up at the sky and my boys rested their heads on my chest. They allowed me to put my arms around them. We talked and they told me all the fun stuff they had been doing, the sports, the soccer goals and home runs, all the cool adventures and I even managed to get a little bit about the girlfriends. It was a magical moment and for just that little while, holding them close to me, I felt like they hadn’t grown up all that much after all and they were still my little boys.

Is there anything better than getting a letter from your kid while he’s at Sleep-away camp?? How about when all three of your kids are at summer camp and write you? How about when all three write that they’re having a great time? Personally, I don’t think it gets better than that. Yes they’re away, yes you miss them like crazy, but knowing they’re having fun while exploring their independence and doing some healthy fending for themselves makes all the difference. I mean after all, what are shooting for as parents? Is my kid going to be the next Einstein? Probably not. The next Michael Jordan? Definitely not. Rich or famous? I wish but who really knows. But what I truly hope and wish for them is to be happy and independent. That’s my job. To create a loving and nurturing environment where my children feel secure and happy and eventually go their own way to lead a full, rich and independent life. I can’t imagine a better place for kids to experience this first step at independence while having the time of their life than at Sleep-away camp.

So when those letters arrive in my mailbox and I open them I can see my kids’ smiles through their chicken scratch handwriting and I can sense them rushing through the letter so they can go back to their friends to enjoy more laughs, run out the bunk to go on to the next adventure and take one more tiny exciting step towards forging their own life.

I know you might think I’m nuts, but as a kid I always remember loving the camp food. While everyone else was busy making jokes about the bug juice and the mong, I was busy getting up and going for seconds and thirds. I love breakfast the best. There was nothing on the breakfast rotation that I didn’t like. French toast my personal favorite, then the pancakes, then scrambled eggs with buttered toast. Bagels on the weekends. There was always the cold cereal option (Frosted Flakes, Cocoa Puffs, Froot Loops, Rice Krispies) and of course, the back up option of hot oatmeal or cream of wheat. What could be so bad.

You really couldn’t go too wrong with lunch either. Grilled cheese, pizza, macaroni and cheese, cold cut sandwiches, salads and soups, and, of course, the back up option at every meal of peanut butter and jelly (remember this was long ago way before the era of all the peanut allergies). Now dinner is when things got interesting. You could have the pot roast-mashed potatoes-gravy-string beans dinner which was always good, or the chicken pot pie dinner (my favorite), or the chicken-rice-carrots/peas combo. These were all good. The turkey-sweet potatoes-corn dinner was awesome and you could never go wrong with the classic spaghetti and meatballs. Things could sometimes get funny when they tried the ravioli, the veal cutlet or when they went with an ethnic night like Mexican or Chinese. Our camp chef and his kitchen staff just didn’t do egg roll or moo goo gai pan very well. And their attempts at enchiladas or chimichangas just seemed to fall short.

But all in all, I loved camp food. I loved the variety, I loved the buffet/cafeteria style of its presentation, I loved going up for endless desserts.

So for all of you who like to make fun of camp food I am sorry I cannot share in your insults

So I’m sitting at Starbucks minding my own business and working on my next book and I overhear a conversation that interests me. Okay, so I’m not exactly minding my own business but anyway.  I decide to walk over to this couple and introduce myself because I hear that the lady is our town librarian.  I tell her a little about myself then shamelessly take out copies of my books (which of course I carry around everywhere) and show them to her in the hopes of her accepting them for the town library.  The gentleman seated next to her looks at the cover of “That Same Summer” and says to me that he knows where that shot was taken.  He proceeds to tell me that the cover shot of my book “That Same Summer” is a rock called Elephant Rock that sits at the far end of Lake Garfield in Monterey, Massachusetts.

I look at him in utter disbelief and ask him how he could have possibly known that.  He tells me that he went to camp there roughly sixty years ago (in the 1940’s).  It ends up he went to a camp called Camp Monterey which sat on the shores of Lake Garfield not more than a couple of hundred yards from where our camp was.  But by the time our camp was running, his camp had already closed up and fallen into disrepair. The campers  at our camp liked to take boats over to that same old abandoned camp (which we called Camp Jason) and go exploring. That old abandoned camp (which I renamed Camp Abner in my books) factored heavily into the story line in both “Summer Sleep-Away” and “That Same Summer” and provided some great scenes there.

Just the idea that I could be sitting so many years later in a Starbucks in Millburn, NJ of all places and bump into a former camper of that same camp who shared the same lake and many of the same memories but so many years apart is mind boggling.  Small world, huh?