The Stewart Blog

Our family dinners are smaller these days as we are losing kids to camp. Last week Caitlin went to field hockey camp and this week John is at boy scout camp. It was Caitlin’s third year at the same camp and John’s first year at Goshen so our comfort levels with them being gone are a little bit different.

Caitlin’s departure was a breeze. For one thing, she knew everything to pack and did it herself. We drove down; ate lunch at the place we always eat; she signed herself in while I parked; we carried her stuff up; I made her bed while she unpacked; and then I left. Easy-peasey.

John required a lot more work. First of all, we had to buy him a pack and boots this week. Then we had to pack. And when I say “we” I mean that I reminded him numerous times to collect certain things like his flashlight and scout book and knife himself before I finally helped him find them. Then I matched his clothes up in four nice outfit-for-a-day bags. Then I helped him logically stuff everything into his pack with his rain jacket on top and his shoes tied on the side. Then I made him put in the flashlight and knife in a place that he would easily find them. And then I said, “I’m putting the flashlight and knife in here. John, are you watching?”

I suppose I worked just as hard on packing Caitlin off to her first year at camp so there is hope for John. The other difference about them being at camp is Caitlin was just a text message away. (As is Caroline.) There is a lot of comfort in that. John on the other hand is completely out of touch for a week. The most I’m going to get is by checking in with a neighbor whose husband is accompanying the boys for the first three days of the trip. I already have, of course, and so far the report is everything is going well and the boys are all happy.

I hope so. Because the last time I saw John he was standing in the pouring rain with water dripping off of his hair and pack which was covered in a plastic trash bag. The bus was late and it was raining hard at the drop off. I waited almost an hour with him before I finally had to leave to pick up Caitlin from her camp so I didn’t see them get on the bus. He didn’t mind me leaving early - he was having a great time with his buddies.

On the other hand, I could tell his socks were wet and dirty when I left and I’m not sure if they’ll get changed at all this week. While I sent him with four bags of clean clothes, if the stories of previous Goshen trips are accurate, the chances of him changing even twice are pretty low.

Update: The report from my mole is that the boys are happy and having fun. John passed his swimming test (swimming 75 yards using some sort of freestyle then and 25 yards backstroke) which means he can work on the canoeing merit badge.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 1:46 pm and is filed under AWS, Family Sports, Colleges . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.