Letting go

It’s my three-year-old son’s first day of summer camp. The zipper on his overstuffed backpack is barely hanging on, with a towel, lunchbox, and change of clothes threatening to burst through the seams. His warm, Mickey Mouse bandaid-adorned hand slips into mine. We walk together, zig-zagging unevenly across the sand.

We approach a group of teenage counselors, huddled under the shade of a small tent, wearing matching camp t-shirts.

Welcome! They shout. They share their names, and my son waves, eyes fixed on the ground. A freckled, pony-tailed counselor gently takes his hand and guides him toward a pile of sand toys. He plops onto the sand and starts pushing a small, worn-down truck.

I linger for a moment, scanning the beach and nearby playground. Glancing briefly at the counselors’ impossibly young faces. Eyeing the other parents, who are seemingly unbothered as they stride back to their cars.

When I’d filled out the camp paperwork a few months ago and delivered it to the camp director—a kind, reassuring, decidedly middle-aged former preschool teacher—the whole idea of camp had seemed abstract. Now, it was summer. And, with sunscreen caking my hands and (some of) my son’s face, this was actually happening.

See you this afternoon! The same counselor, seemingly in charge, offers sunnily in my direction.

And then I leave.

*********

I call my husband in the car.

It’s run by teenagers, I say. Like, this kid could not have been older than 15. I know I used to be a camp counselor when I was in high school, but are they really qualified to be doing this?! I definitely didn’t know what I was doing at that age.

He barely gets a word in. 

I mean, there’s no way these kids know how to administer an Epi-Pen. I go on. Do you think they train them in that?

He asks some questions, which I do not register.

And what do they even do when they go in the water? They realize he doesn’t know how to swim, right?

Maybe this was a bad idea. Should we just keep him home instead?

*********

In moments of quiet, when we step outside the day-to-day grind of parenting, most of us have an idea of the type of parent we are. Maybe we even label our particular style of parenting—a “gentle” parent, a “strict” parent, a “relaxed” parent.

We have ideas about what we’ll do in given situations, and how we’ll feel.

We’ll find ourselves nodding along, for example, with research that supports giving our children greater independence. We’ll agree with the idea of putting them in new and different situations, allowing them to explore and discover and encounter unfamiliar obstacles and learn to move past them. We’ll sign our children up for camp without a moment’s hesitation, knowing this is good for them, and for us.

We’ll assume that when we reach these new and different situations, we’ll feel confident in our decisions. That we’ll be relaxed, carefree, reassured by the fact that it aligns with our parenting philosophy, with who we are as a parent.

We do not assume that we’ll spend the evening anxiously obsessing over a camp’s swim protocol.

But parenting surprises us. We surprise ourselves. The things we do and say, the values we hold, the ways we react to new situations. Sometimes, we are not who we expect to be.

And in those moments, when we’re not the parent we thought we were, we have to choose the parent we want to be.

*********

The next day, I use a permanent marker to write my son’s food allergies in giant letters on his lunchbox. I ask the counselors their ages, and where they go to school, and how long they’ve been working at the camp. I remind them that my son does not know how to swim, so they should keep a close eye on him in the water.

And then I leave.

When I pick him up, he has not had a single sip of his water bottle. They say he cried for a few minutes in the pool. He is, inexplicably, not wearing shoes.

I take a deep breath.

How was your day? I ask.

Without hesitation, he answers. Great! 

He grabs my hand, and we walk back to the car, together.