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Dec. 29, 2006
We like "Camp Stay Home"
Keep your kids by your side for a summer that they'll never forget.
LISA Z. SEGELMAN
"What are your kids doing this summer?" my friend Lori
asked. "Nothing," I said.
"Nothing?" she asked. It was dinnertime. I was rushed.
I failed to give my practised response, but I still had a chance
to recoup.
"Well, not really nothing," I said. "We're joining
the town pool and visiting my parents a lot at the shore. And Talia's
been painting a hobby horse that's been in the family for 50 years.
She's really excited about that."
The town pool and visiting grandparents in fun locales doesn't count
with the camp parents as "something" to do for the summer.
I can't understand why. Laid-back summers with no scheduled arts-and-crafts
and archery is my family's idea of summer. What can beat bike rides
on the boardwalk, waiting for John the ice cream man and crabbing
in the bay? (Yes, we throw the un-kosher crawlers back.)
But trying to explain a summer without a schedule to the smores
set isn't easy. Overnight camp for the kids under 10 and special
interest camps for pursuits like karate and chess are the only plans
that seem to get nods of approval. To these families, my kids waking
up whenever they want, rolling around in pajamas and waiting for
the UPS man to come truly comes under the category of "doing
nothing."
"Won't your kids drive you crazy at home?" a friend of
mine asked. Of course, they will.
If both parents have to work all summer, then camp is terrific -
even necessary - option. Others consider Jewish summer camping as
key in helping shape strong Jewish identities.
But I'm not the only one "just saying no" to camp.
"It's the one time I can actually spend time with my kids,"
said Chris Bates, a mother of three. "If you send them to camp,
there's no difference between summer and the pressure of the school
year."
"The time you have as a family all goes so fast," said
mother of six Robin Morris.
And then there's the cost. Two summers ago, my son went to a fancy
camp for four weeks and we spent the equivalent per day of a stay
in a fine hotel. My college roommate, Karen, sent her teenage son
to UCLA for six weeks last summer. He took courses, visited television
show tapings, theme parks and Ben and Jerry's all over Los Angeles.
Cost: $6,000. "He did learn how to do his laundry," conceded
Karen.
Another roommate's son spent his second summer at the New York Film
Academy. "It's outrageously expensive; they all are,"
said Margo. Maybe it's because the location choices include Princeton,
Harvard, London, Paris or Florence.
This summer, we'll make things like banana bread in our air-conditioned
kitchen, and put the bread we save towards a family vacation at
a Jellystone Campground, where the whole family can make smores
together. Between Shabbat services and Sunday Hebrew school, my
kids are up and out every morning of the year, except during vacations.
By summer, no schedule, no fees and no obligations are appealing
to all of us.
We've done a test run by spending more weekend time at home and,
already, the quality of the forts made out of bed sheets and boxes
has improved. It's not all about digging for worms and playing in
the sprinkler these days, either. Between the pool, the shore, mini-courses
and the classic summer family vacation, if we had a backyard hammock,
it would be swinging empty for a good part of July and August.
A summer at home, however, means I'm going to hear those two little
words that make parents feel like summer-planning failures: "I'm
bored."
"If you're bored, you're boring," my mother used to say.
Boredom is the precursor to creativity in my book. No matter how
many Barbie salon-heads in the playroom, giving the shrubs a haircut
with a pair of scissors is much more fun and inventive. Plus, homes
with kids are filled with toys never played with, books never read
and search-and-destroy missions never taken.
Before I know it, the cellphone will be where I left it and wet
towels won't be left on the floor. Someday, the only summer plans
I'll have to worry about will be my own.
Still, asking others about their upcoming summer is hard to resist.
When I saw my eight-year-old neighbor riding her bike with an elderly
man, I called out, "Hey, Alejandra, what are you doing this
summer?"
"Right now, I'm riding my bike with my grandfather," she
said. Content to take life as it comes, she rode off down the hill.
So this summer at least, I'm the nanny, the mommy, the tour guide
and the camp counsellor. It may be an alternative lifestyle in suburbia,
but while my kids still want to be with me, I want to be with them.
Lisa Z. Segelman is a New Jersey freelance writer and
mother of three. This column first appeared in the New Jersey
Jewish News.
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