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Letting Go at Summer Camp
I am such a weenie – a bona fide Mamma’s boy . . . Soft in the middle and maybe on top and underneath as well, because when I drop my children off at summer camp I cry . . . I mean really cry, like I’ve been shot in the femur with a bow and arrow or something. (I do manage to wait until they’re out of sight, which is saying something . . . I guess.)
And I have no idea why. I mean I do, but I don’t. Because the majority of my days I go around thinking that if I could just get a couple of days of peace and quiet at my house then all would be well. Please understand that I love my children but there are FOUR of them between the ages of 8 and 14 and the assault upon one’s senses can be, shall we say, “strong.” I know my wife feels the same way. I have seen her intentionally lead them onto the porch where I am comfortably resting in the hammock and then slyly slip away as the attack begins . . .
“Dad, I’m not sure you paid me last week’s allowance and there’s this camping knife and I was hoping you’d take me to look at . . .”
“Hey – Dad, can I spend the night out, Morgan wants me to go to this movie and I know its rated PG-13 but . . .”
“Dad – Gussie stole my fish and I think she put it in the freezer and Mom might be cooking it now . . . and have you seen the frog either?”
“Dad, what’s a “mike-cobe,” I read that “mike-cobes” make you sick and that they’re found in dirty places and so now I’m sure it’s Jane’s room that makes us all sick sometimes and . . .”
“Dad . . .?”
My friend Johnny asked me to play “Twenty Questions” while riding our bikes up Roanoke Mountain last week. I glared at him and had the answer in five. Dissecting questions and dolling out answers is a highly practiced “combat art” in our house. Enter at your own risk.
Also bring anything you cherish and value into our home at your own risk. Things tend to get broken here - typically beyond repair and if I were to try and list the items that have either disappeared or been smashed to smithereens in the last year you’d be holding a much thicker edition of your newspaper. If you’ve never beheld a “smithereen” before, please do drop by. I have baskets of them in my workshop. Expensive pottery and certain ceramic lamp bases make for the best smithereens.
So one would think that the long anticipated break from some of the chaos would be just that – a welcome break, and it is I guess. But it’s so amazingly and wonderfully painful as well. Amazingly because one would assume as a parent you’d be so focused on getting such a break that no pain could possibly be felt. And wonderfully because saying good bye reminds you that in spite of the often overwhelming “nature of the business” there simply are no words to describe the extraordinary depth of your love for them.
The old saying goes that, “there are no atheists in foxholes,” and I suppose the same could be said of parents in the drop off line at summer camp. For without a loving God to entrust them to, I simply can not imagine that the task would be doable.
The world is full of dangers, of course, any one of which could significantly impact your world or mine tomorrow. But without the confidence that God’s Spirit still moves powerfully and profoundly through that same world (and dare I say through the outcomes of those dangers that do befall us), I could not and would not risk those who ultimately give us the only real possession any of us takes with us to eternity - our love for one another.
Yeah, I can let the tears flow sometimes, and at such moments I know that I am never more alive . . . And man, does it feel good.
- Stuart