It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
The kids are gone, the kids are gone, the kids are gone! Sorry, had to get the obligatory crowing out of the way.
If you read my blog regularly, you know I love my kids. If you don’t, trust me, I do. But this 3.5-week separation is essential to my family’s mental health.
The girls need the time away from us to bond with friends, develop their independence and learn to become their own selves—insert every article on the “benefits of camp” here. [image error]
My husband and I need the time away from them to remember who we are as a couple, to get things done around the house, to reminisce back to the days prior to 1999 and to just be adults. Oh, and to play our nightly Rummy-Q games (Of which I am currently the reigning champ—this NEVER happens, so please allow me time to gloat; it will be short-lived, I’m sure.)
Additionally, I need the time to be by myself in order to protect my mental health, so that by the time they return, I am calmer, more relaxed and better able to deal with them than when they left.
And of course, the extra time to myself gives me lots of time to write!
However, I’ve noticed a few things that have changed this year. For one, three of the four of us were WAY more relaxed about getting ready for camp than usual. Usually, I start getting ready in April—put away the Passover things and bring out the camp things. This year, I didn’t. The camp drawers didn’t come out of the basement until a week before the girls left. A week! For an anal person like me, that’s like…I don’t even know what that’s like! But that’s unheard of! Guess what? It was no big deal. We were shopping right up until three days before the girls left. Again, I never do that. And you know what, it was exhausting, but also not horrible. Oh, and labeling. That was done the week before. In one day. By them and me. And it got finished. Even the god-forsaken socks that multiply. Amazing!
Everyone was calm in the car on the way to camp also. Now, that could have been because we’d spent the night before at a One Direction concert, the adult ears had been blasted and no one had gotten much sleep before having to get up very early the next morning to leave. Or it could have just been that while the girls were excited, they finally figured out that bouncing in the seat and squealing will not get us to camp any faster (and may result in packed items falling on top of them—we still have not learned to “pack light”).
Because we left so early in the morning, we were one of the first ones there. Camp changed its check-in procedure, so we zoomed through everything and had two kids at different ends of camp unpacked and ready to go, with an extra return to one bunk to say last goodbyes in an hour and fifteen minutes. That’s a record. No one forgot anything, no one raced up for one last hug, no one asked us to do anything (except maybe leave a little sooner and stop taking pictures).
And now that they’re gone? Well, we’re getting a lot done around the house. And I’m writing a lot. The days are not zooming by, but are progressing at a nice, quiet pace. I miss them, but know they’re having fun, as the first letter proves.
So excuse me, but for the next 20 days, I’m going to party like it’s 1998. [image error]
