Everything Happened | vol. 233
Summer is jail
A few years ago, we were registering for summer camps in March and April. This year, I got a postcard announcing offerings for one camp before Christmas. I tossed the postcard directly in the trash. Don’t make me complicit in your terrorism.
But then, by January 15, I had scratched out the following serial killer manifesto and posted it to my Instagram stories. Who’s the terrorist now? I think my fellow moms of young kids thought I was doing this AT them, but obviously this is all just a trauma response and a cry for help.
Our elementary school is pre-K to 5th grade, so both Jane and Desi were able to start school at age 4. Public pre-K saved our sanity and made it possible for us to almost afford having three kids, not that we have ever been strategic about any of this.
But it does introduce the summer camp scramble prematurely.
Also, did you know that summer is jail for parents? This is the first summer that I will need to get three kids to three ever-shifting locations, each with different packing lists and lunch requirements and pick-up and drop-off times. My first-born, who loves school, hates camp. I assumed school and camp would land the same for him when we started putting him in camps, because he is enthusiastic and social and a joiner.
I learned that school and camp are different, though? School is highly structured, academically challenging, and run mostly by battle-worn no-nonsense middle-aged women. Camp is anarchy with a few teenagers standing around in tie-dye, arms crossed. The panic about camp would start with Desi at bedtime the night before, pleading and negotiating with us about the next day, begging to stay home, complaining that we just “put him there so we don’t have to deal with him.” (Correct.)
He would run off at camp! Bolt into the woods or whatever. We were always late to drop him off because extracting him from the house was a full military operation. He would refuse to get out of the car at drop-off, and I would have to pry his little fingers from the metal frame of the minivan. He’d get kicked out, he’d get sent home. Nick and I were unprepared. His teachers had always noted his energy level (high), but we’d never gotten any calls home from school about his behavior. He was a pleasure to have in class!
The next summer, I tried to correct and pepper in some “specialty” camps with the usual YMCA and Parks & Recreation Department offerings. These are twice the cost and they end at 3pm or earlier? For some fucking reason?? This felt like a caring but sane move, landing somewhere in between the “tough love” that I was raised with and the more indulgent “I ‘have’ to send my kid to all camps tailored to his interests or he won’t like me” approach.
When I was a kid, day camp was elective for us. It broke up the lull of an unscheduled summer. My mom was a school nurse, so she had summers off my whole childhood. I’d find out I was put in some random basketball camp at Wright State or whatever, and be a little trepidatious, but ultimately the novelty of interacting with teenagers and not having to be home doing chores was too seductive. And I didn’t have to do it every week.
By middle school, I was able to fill my summers with jobs like babysitting and slinging microwaved nachos at the pool snack bar. My mom ran a very “if you have time to lean, you have time to clean” household, so if I was home, I’d put on bad Comedy Central standup and put a full laundry basket next to me on the couch so I could pretend I was pairing socks if anyone walked in.
We took boring, wholesome vacations to National Parks or to visit family, almost always road trips. When August came around, I was more than ready to get back to the immersive social environment of school. One teacher called me “ponytail” because I was always spun around in my seat, chatting with the person behind me.
A local friend has older kids than mine and describes how her middle school boy is an aspiring artist and he spends his summer days sketching or animating on his tablet. He’s post-summer camp. Her child is a house cat, basically, while my oldest is more like a border collie who got into some gas station diet pills. I can envision an older version of Jane quietly doing crafts all day, but Desi requires a lot more external input. And most American cities do not have the built environment to support kids getting around freely without transportation help from adults.
So, as a certified camp-hater, I’m asking: when do working parents get to stop doing day camps? And what happens instead? My school-aged kids are already at the point where if they have a half-day at school, they can come home on the bus and reliably feed and entertain themselves without interrupting my work day. But those are one-off days, not 11 weeks stretching out before us in a big, drowsy yawn. For now, we do one week of summer vacation, two weeks at their grandparents’ houses, and 8 weeks in between of churning, all-consuming camp-based agita.
And don’t say 8 straight weeks of East-Coast-style sleepaway camp unless you are offering a full-tuition scholarship 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
yr mate,
Evie
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I literally lol'd multiple times while reading this. You are an excellent writer and so so funny, I always look to reading your posts. I have no interest in summer camps yet (my daughter is only 3) but this was so enjoyable to read.
“Summer is jail for parents” is exactly right. And I had it easy because I teach and had summers off — but of course summers were harder work than the school year some years. My kids are grown now, but I’m so furious that it’s still up to individual parents to figure this out. Middle and high school years, summers were easier/harder depending on the kid. Where I live, fall sports start training in the summer. For one kid, that meant cross-country practice and a few days of team camp kept him busy enough.
I don’t know if it helps, but I really couldn’t have predicted when they were younger how their friends and interests would evolve and that slowly the burden of finding the things for them to do would ease as they made their own choices. Also, neighborhood parents and carpools saved me. One local friend is a morning person who was always down to drive kids to 6 a.m. practices, so I’d reciprocate by having her younger kid come to our house for breakfast and the walk to school during the school year. All those fellow parents feel like my version of old Army buddies these days when we see each other.