Scenes from sleepaway camp drop-off
Dripping with anticipation, overwhelmed by reality
We’re leaving the city with Ada en route to sleep away summer camp, heading to a small lake in New Jersey. It feels like we’ve been packing for weeks. Labeling endlessly. Going through the list and checking it thrice.
She’s insists on getting a royal blue trunk, as though she’s boarding an ocean liner to cross the Atlantic and it’s 1912. The trunk itself is at least 50 lbs and with all her belongings, is the stuff that middle-aged back injuries are made of. The handle is too short, the proportions are awkward, and it seems evident that the entire trunk industry is being kept alive exclusively by sleep away summer camps, only to take up precious space in basement storage the rest of the year.
We’re 10 minutes from home, passing through lower Manhattan, and the sun is already hot. We’re stopped on the west side highway at a red light and Ada looks up at the Freedom Tower. She sighs a very pleased sigh from the back seat.
“I just love the architecture in this part of the city,” she says, and Jacob and I look at each stifling laughs at the genuinely generic quality of buildings we’re surrounded by.
“It’s why I could only ever live in New York City,” she adds.
I remind her that at this moment, she is actually leaving the city, for camp, by a lake.
“Yeah,” she says, “but then I get to come back. I’m only 9 and I’m already living the dream.”
//
We’re 13 minutes away from arriving at camp, and decide to get some lunch before bringing Ada to her designated 30-minute drop-off slot. The nearest restaurant is a generic “New American Grill,” with an overly-air conditioned dining room adjacent to an oversized banquet room. A poster in the entry way suggests you could rent out the banquet room for a private party and have the floor adorned with rose petals for just $99. I wonder how many times they’ve ever rented it out.
We slide into a sage green booth, surrounded by red, yellow, white, and black tile in a pattern that suggests: explosions. On all sides there are large TV screens showing half a dozen different sports. There’s surfing on one, soccer on another, pre-Wimbledon coverage on another, and then some commentators discussing basketball.
Ada initially wants a $25 poke bowl, which we suggest might not be a particularly popular item at a grill in a rural-ish area of New Jersey, and she takes a hint. She opts for the pizza off the kids’ menu because “pizza night at camp isn’t until Friday, and that’s a lot longer than I’m used to waiting for pizza.”
She gets an oversized Coke Zero, and spends most of the lunch excitedly squirming in the booth, shaping her straw wrapper into various shapes, while Jacob and I eat an entree-sized appetizer order of fried brussels sprouts.
Our waiter, Antonio, is about 24 with blonde tips, and looks like when he’s not at the grill he’s auditioning for something on Broadway.
We hustle to leave the restaurant but on the way out, Ada beelines for the free mint basket by the front door and grabs at least a dozen, stuffing them in her pockets.
Jacob reviews the receipt and comments that this lunch was awfully pricey for what it was.
“Really?,” says Ada. “This is my probably my favorite restaurant….in New Jersey.”
She pops a mint into her mouth and counts down the last ten minutes of our drive until we pull into camp.
//
After a mandatory lice check and visit with the camp nurse, we haul Ada’s belongings to her bunk, where at least a dozen other girls and their parents are frantically trying to unpack and set-up their stuff. The bunk is hot, with an overhead fan, and it’s clear there are old pros and true novices among the parents.
Ada wants a top bunk, but must occupy a bottom slot on account of her two broken wrists. She’s disappointed by this fact, but it turns out the bottom bunks have the gift of under-bed storage. There’s the frenetic energy of everyone trying to claim their spot and their space. The girls are quickly evaluating each other’s stuff and the parents are manifesting their anxieties in all the ways they are trying to set-up their daughters.
At least 70% of the children appear to have hand-held mini fans. Two knowing girls have pouches that velcro on to the end of the beds. A few have “husband” style pillows, which I catch Ada ogling out of jealousy. They each have their respective piles of books. They’re eyeing each others’ toiletries. Jacob overhears one girl asks Ada what kind of skincare she brought, and if any of it is from Sephora. Ada confirms that she does know and like Sephora, but she doesn’t have any stuff from there.
“I do have face masks,” she adds.
There’s bedding to set-up, a spot for hanging laundry bags, another for shoes, sleeping bags, towels, and bathing suits. There’s a set of hooks specifically for raincoats, with rain boots meant to go under them.
I’d insisted that for three weeks, she couldn’t possibly need rain boots, given she literally never wears rain boots the rest of the year. But, as all other children set out their rain boots, Ada says she definitely needs rain boots.
“Please mama. Send the rain boots I showed you. They are BLUE. The blue rain boots.”
The ones she’d shown me were definitely red, but I tell her I will figure it out and put something in the mail.
Fifteen minutes later, Jacob and I need to exit the bunk because we’re sweating profusely and are so, so thirsty. Ada walks with us and we’re making a short list of the things we still need to send her by mail.
“Batteries, your bathrobe, and the blue rain boots,” I say out loud, to confirm. It’s clear we need to get this right.
“RED,” she says. I told you red.”
Jacob looks at me and mouths, “She definitely said blue” and I mouth back, “TIME TO GO.”
We walk Ada back to her cabin, where she agrees to a picture in front of her cabin with her sweaty mother, and we turn to walk off.
There are no tears and no prolonged goodbyes.
I get home and the red boots she wants are sold out. Blue boots, it is.
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Recommendations:
To visit: The Tove Jansson and the Moomins exhibit/installation at Brooklyn Public Library, which opened last Friday and is up until the end of September
To read: How the Tiny Chef Creators Animated a Broken Heart — on the animated announcement of the end of this beloved series. (My kids are obsessed). On a happier note, you can still leave Tiny Chef a voicemail! Ada has left him…many!
To look forward to: Oliver Jeffers: Life at Sea at the Brooklyn Museum, an interactive exhibit opening September 19th.
To watch: Season 2 of The Rehearsal by Nathan Fielder. No spoilers, please! We’re on the last episode!!!! Even if Fielder’s flavor of situational comedy is not for you, the production of this show is such a fascinating feat. Where are the good discussions and deconstructions of how this was made?
To watch: Wimbledon starts today!
Currently reading:
Roadtrips, father/daughter relationships, grief, kids, and so many laughs: The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett
Part novel, part memoir, breakups, religion, heartache: The Mobius Book by Catherine Lacey.
Recs, please: your best summer recipes? Salads, things that don’t require so much oven, desserts, etc. I have so many ripe peaches rn.
I remember using a metal trunk at camp thousands of year ago, which in it's next life became a coffee table in my apt in my 20s (only to probably be left behind in the garage storage unit). For peaches, I swear by Amanda Hesser's Peach Tart - https://food52.com/recipes/14217-peach-tart?srsltid=AfmBOoolSq7hzmEHRtQITOP8p3HM2OBJSlWj-6ISEIeohkRnHgIgazK-
SO GLAD my kids' camp had a situation where you dropped off the bags a few days in advance and they drove them to camp and put them in the bunks. You did lice check and the kids boarded the busses and you waved good bye in the parking lot. It would have stressed me out to see what other kids had that mine didn't.
I did love the world weary "that's why I could only live in NYC" ;)