Camp

Yesterday we dropped the oldest off at camp, and it feels like something is missing around here today

IMG_0154

Not that we see that much of him these days anyway, but still- something is definitely missing.

IMG_0153

It’s been a weird summer, not for him- he claims it’s been the best summer yet.  But for me, it’s been weird.

IMG_0164

He’s never home, always with friends.

IMG_0165

I know it’s all part of growing up, being with friends is more fun than being home with us.  I get it.

IMG_0170

But it’s all the time!  And I miss him.  Yes, that’s the crazy little brother in the back.

IMG_0189

But he just laughs when I tell him that.  And goes on.

And I’m glad.  Mostly.

Because this is the kid that decided not to go to camp last year even after we signed him up, the one that needed help falling asleep most nights by having his dad hang with him.  Those days seem like so long ago, yet they weren’t.

I miss you Austin, I know you are having a great time but there is a small vacancy in my heart this week.

Which made me think of my fave Anna Quindlen article.

Enjoy

Raising Children
by Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief.

I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast.Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like.

Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon, and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages, dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, and finally what the women on the playground, and the well-meaning relations — well what they taught me was that they couldn’t really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything.

One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.

When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome.

To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.

I remember 15 years ago pouring over one of Dr. Brazelton’s wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made.They have all been enshrined in the “Remember-When-Mom-Did ” Hall of Fame.The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs.The times the baby fell off the bed.The times I arrived late for preschool pickup.The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp.The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, “What did you get wrong?” (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald’s drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1.

And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.

I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I’m not sure what worked and what didn’t, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I’d done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top.

And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity.

That’s what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me awhile to figure out who the experts were.

About The Author

admin

4 COMMENTS

  1. Penny | 26th Jul 10

    Great camp pictures. It looks like a wonderful time for Austin!

    Ms.Quindlen’s article really hit home with me. We seem to be in just about the same place in life. I could relate to most everything she wrote about raising her children. Thank you for sharing that.

  2. karenr | 27th Jul 10

    I just got my babies back from their two week camp – although it was their third year – it was not any easier on the mama! I always get nervous that I might not be able to pick them out of the crowd during pick up !!!

  3. meg duerksen | 27th Jul 10

    my scott is gone all the time too.
    it weird!
    gone from morning till dinner at the gym…..it’s crazy.
    and i admit….i can’t handle the anna quinlan story today. my heart can’t.
    i will read it another day.
    🙂

  4. lauren | 31st Jul 10

    i love this anna quindlen piece. there is a quote from her on the white board in my kitchen right now. what a great writer. my austin is 20 now and i remember the first summer when he was away more than he was home….between seventh and eighth grade. i really think it hadn’t yet ocurred to me that every summer wouldn’t be the same…my three children wouldn’t wait for me to lead them in whatever the day’s activities would be. it was a beating. enjoy yours being big and small and in between. every age, ever stage, is so sweet.

Leave A Comment