It's the Holiday Season: Time to Look for Summer Camp

While most people this time of year are looking at toy catalogues, scoping out sales on men's pajamas (hey, what else are you gonna get Grandpa?), and decking the halls with strings of lights (or loading the larder with the ingredients for latkes), I am looking for sleepaway camp for my kids.

To some of you, this may seem premature.  After all, it's only November.  In fact, I am late to the party. Lots of camps along the Eastern Seaboard fill up a full year in advance, even in these troubled times.  To others of you, (i.e., anyone who is neither Jewish nor inclined to send their kids to Bible Camp) the whole idea of sleepaway camp might seem bizarre.  "You're sending your kids where?  For how long?" the whale-belt set might ask.

I'm sending them to a beautiful place where they will be on an extended, month-long sleepover with kids they don't see the rest of the year. I'm sending them to a place where they can learn to water ski, rock climb, even make a movie.  I'm sending them to a song-filled, camp-fire fueled, totally insulated unreal world where everyone (at least the kids) is on perma-vacation, and where friendships go from nice-to-meet you to friends-forever in a matter of a few intense weeks. I'm sending them to a place where they have a chance - for a few months out of the year - to be someone else entirely.

I'm sending them to a place that costs - for seven weeks - about what a year's tuition at my fancy private college cost oh-so-many years ago. Of course I'll be sending myself into a summer-long depression when I realize that my entire life is so centered around my children that I don't know what to do with myself...but enough about me. I'm sending them because as much as I don't want them to go...I want them to go.

I loved camp.  For most of the year I was the frizzy-haired smart-girl who wasn't any good at sports. I didn't have the right clothes, or hair that would succumb to the Farrah Fawcett Flip. I was the girl the cheerleaders ignored and the jocks didn't even see.  At my performing arts camp, I was the lead in almost every musical I auditioned for.  Looks mattered less than talent - so I was granted access into the cool crowd, frizzy hair and all.There were no cheerleaders, and the only jocks were the inner city kids the camp owner let come for free so that we wouldn't lose every inter-camp game. We were all misfits.   We all went to camp to get away from what we were "supposed" to be, and just be.

Incidentally, one of those "misfits" is the Tony Award winning producer of Wicked (perhaps you've heard of it?), another has won seven Emmy Awards, including Television Producer of the Year, a third has three Tonys and two Drama Desk Awards, and one of those imported jocks?  He's is world class musician who has  recorded with Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, and Queen Latifah, to name a few. (Take that Jocks and Cheerleaders who are doubtless now wearing velor sweatsuits (the women) and low-slung pants (the men - oh, and some of the women  -- muffin top alert!) and bemoaning the loss of their glory days.)

My kids are not artistically inclined.  For them, I am looking for an old-fashioned general summer camp. A little bit of sports, a little bit of arts and crafts.  Bad food. Big campfires. White shirts into the laundry, grey shirts back.Canoes. Color War. Friday night socials.  Turns out, that's not so easy to find anymore.

Now, camps have full color, magazine quality brochures, and professionally produced videos that feature their state of the art ropes courses (full disclosure: I don't even know what that is, really.), or  their newly constructed Olympic Quality gymnastics studios.  One camp boasts about the head of their horseback riding program being the coach of the foremost college riding team in the country.  Another has a Tennis coach who is a former Olympian. We had logs thrown across the muddy pathways between the bunks and a rickety motorboat that regularly broke down.  Now there are zip lines, and fleets of motorboats.  Gone are the days hamburgers on Monday, Sloppy Joes on Tuesday,  pasta with meat sauce on Wednesday, and mystery meat Empanadas on Thursday. These camps have chefs, and salad bars, and home baked bread.  They serve made-to-order omelettes...even sushi.

It's all very impressive, and it sounds like a blast But it kinda gives me the willies. If I hear the phrase "state of the art" one more time I just may lose the mystery meat I had for dinner.I know it's been decades since I went to camp, but since when did going to sleepaway camp become going to a luxury resort?

The camp director's will all tell you that camp is still about the friendships you make, and the lessons you learn. They say it's not about winning.  It's about fair play and good sportsmanship. But then one of those camp directors went on to bad mouth his competition, calling another camp "a dump"  Nice sportsmanship, fella.

So I've been a bit suspicious of these camp directors who have, admittedly, dedicated their lives to giving kids the time of their lives. So I decided to go to some of my kids' friends who have already gone to sleepaway camp. They all love it.  But not one of them talked about the state-of-the-art anything.  They talked about the friends they made.  They talked about the fun of sharing a bunk.  They talked about the feeling you can only get at camp - a world unto itself.

And it got me thinking: maybe these kids don't like camp because of all of the bells and whistles, but in spite of them.  Because camp really isn't about state of the art -- it's about state of the heart. Corny (and catchy....consider it copyrighted, people!) but true.  I don't want my kids to miss that.

I want them to sleep in an uncomfortable bunk bed with a bunkmate that snores...and learn to deal with it.  I want them to form friendships so intense that - like mine - twenty-five years later, they're still going strong.  I want them to scream so hard the last night of color war that they can't talk right for a few days.I want them to find mold on their bathing suit and learn that I was right - you really do have to rinse it out and hang it up to dry.  I want them to love camp as much as I did.

As for me, maybe I'll take up zip lining.

Original Post to NYC Moms Blog. Nancy Friedman blogs at From Hip to Housewife.