Visiting Day

Today is the day. The day we make the trek to see our darling children who left our home a mere 11 days ago. Today is the day we tip the counselors, buy sodas and ice cream, take a quick trip off camp, and ooh and ahh at the girls' beds. Frankly, MBB had it right when he asked the kids "Hey, how come your stuff doesn't look this neat at home?"

We get the whole to-do about how the bunk NEVER looks like this, and you can't IMAGINE what it looks when it's not visiting day. This does not thrill me, because then they come home and I expect them to clean their room and make their beds,and they expect a point system connected to some odd line-up song devoted to cliched rhymes with the words "bunk" and "spunk," "great" and "top rate," definitely in the lyrics.

The camp they're in is really nice. I just have one complaint. Th staff members who tauntingly ride around in their golf carts, while the rest of us have to walk the whole campus. It's not just that they ride around, NO, despite lots of little people (think Cheese-Eater size) running around, they are ZOOMING around. Granted a golf cart can't go very fast, but when you're walking on what seems to be a pedestrian path with a bunch of little kids, it's amazing how fast those things seem to go. Of course it does not engender much confidence that some of the drivers seem to be straining to reach the pedals, and are taunted by their equally young friends that their driving is...pathetic. Oh joy.

So the big discussion on the way up to camp is always...the traffic on the way home. Not being denizens of the city, we cut our trip by half. That doesn't mean we get away Scot-free. This year we chose to take a route that took us 30 miles out of the way to avoid bumper to bumper traffic on the main highway that was down to one lane for a few miles, due to construction. I love listening to people complain about this, they take it so personally. As if the powers that be PURPOSELY are doing construction just to disrupt people's summer Sunday evenings. In a perfect world, construction would be done during a blizzard, when no one is on the road, and finished in six hours. In the real world of unions, construction, rain, etc, construction, major construction, tends to take a looooong time.

So a trip that takes an hour forty in the morning, with NO traffic at all, takes 2 1/2 hours on the way home. There's no way it will ever take one forty on the way home, and the amount of time it took, is the amount that it has typically taken over the years, just this year we did not sit in traffic. I'd always rather drive than sit, especially since the minute we hit traffic the kids just start fighting. It's really weird. It probably has to do with the scenery not changing, no cows, RVs, horses, or motorcycles to look for. The stuff around you is going to be there for a long time, so you might as well look at your sibling, and see how you can rearrange facets of her being for your own amusement.

A few years ago we started taking dinner sandwiches in a cooler for the kids on the way home. This has made getting home much more pleasant. No leftovers to heat up, no lines to stand in at a takeout place, packed with all the people headed into the city who got off the Thruway for dinner and to "wait it out" a little. Nope, we just throw 'em in the shower, play a game, and send them to bed.

Why am I recounting this whole thing? It sounds like a schlep, it seems like a pain in the neck. Indeed it does. And yet, the kids love to show us everything. Year after year, I really believe they like it that we see THEIR place. They spend four weeks there. In the life of a kid, that's a long time to be so disconnected from parents. There are some people who prefer not to deal with the traffic and the crowds, and because we live close enough, they send a van to pick up their kids, and just bring them home for the day. That's not for me. For as long as they have visiting day, and as long as my kids are in camp, I will do my darnedest to GO see them.

So until next year, when we make the trip again, excited to see our kids, and just so grateful that they are having the time of their lives.