Letters from camp

While many parents would send in troops to rescue their children from anything, by the time homesick letters from camp hit our mailboxes, the kids usually are over their fears and having fun. (Photo: behance.net/runamokstudios)

Summer camp. We research, we prep, we pack, we pay (!), and then we send our darling children off to be managed by strangers for weeks at a time. It’s scary and awesome all at once. For us and our kids. The terror of untethering a 10 year old and sending him or her alone on an airplane across the country (or on a bus up I-10) to be picked up in a van by a Chaco-wearing college student likely in need of a shower cannot be underestimated.

A few days, though, and somehow the temporary routine without children settles in. But then they hit us – the letters from camp. The very first one I ever received, no lie, read, “I am crying as I write this…” Off I went, that first time, into a tailspin so unfortunate that my then-husband said if I couldn’t pull myself together my daughter could not go back to camp. Another letter, from my second daughter’s first trek beyond my grip: “Mommy, please come pick me up now. I MEAN IT.” Verbatim.

A friend’s daughter amplified her own dramatic request. This little girl was at the same camp her mom had attended and loved, but she wasn’t loving it. So she sent a letter, arranging a time and date during rest hour when her parents could sneak in and rescue her. “She had a detailed, hand-drawn map of exactly where we should collect her at the pier by the river,” her mom remembers. “We did not receive this instructional letter until we had returned home from a trip, and the date had come and gone. Poor thing. Her daddy would have sent in a special-ops team to rescue her…. He couldn’t stand summer camp either!” There was no second year for this camper.

During his first year at camp, Andrew Byrd wrote his parents, “I really miss you. I want to stay 2 weeks [instead of the full three]. If I go to Katy’s [his older sister’s] cabin I will be kicked out of camp forever. I’m scared of the lake swim. I have to do it. I can’t say no. I am so homesick. I feel unsafe here. I HATE it here … I will die here.” To make his point, Andrew signed the letter, “Love,” but crossed that out and re-signed it, “From, Andrew.” He also gave his letter a ransom-y feel by using colorful letter stickers in place of random characters in the prose.

More angst, but not the homesick kind: A 14 year old who must remain anonymous wrote his parents, “Yesterday we had the dance because the 4^th is Friday. At the dance, I realized that I don’t just wanna be friends with Jennie and that it was too late to change that because she is already dancing and talking with someone else. I think I know what heartbreak feels like now. It’s a flurry of anger, envy, and need that rises up in your chest and flies around in your head. Also we were eliminated from basketball yesterday.”

Of course, the letters aren’t all doom and gloom. This is summer camp after all. Grace Evans, when she was 8, used craft time to make a button that read, “Kelly and Scott Evans are the BEST Parents EVER!” She sent the button home in a letter, and Kelly says, “I immediately pinned it on my bulletin board to get me through those trying parenting times!” Kelly is proud that no prompting was reported – Grace “was just suddenly overcome by the awesomeness of her parents.”

And then there are the letters sent from home to our campers. When Holly Yeager was 8, she wasn’t ready to be shipped off, but her sister Melanie Kate was attending Camp Ozark. Holly sent a newsy letter to her big sister, full of gossip that their principal was having a baby (!!), that the family was going swimming with their neighbors and that Holly’d had a playdate. At the end of the letter, Holly attached a bracelet she’d made for Melanie Kate out of neon pipe cleaners, along with what her mom describes as “a bit of our cat’s food taped in the middle with the caption, ‘Eaten food from Snow.’” The cat’s name was Snowflake.

My personal favorite letter came just last summer from my younger daughter. She wrote, “I just wanted to say, the girls in my cabin use bad language, and I realize why you say no bad words. It’s annoying, and sounds bad. Love you!”

Victory.

Editor’s note: To share your own memorable camp letters (names can be changed to protect the innocent), comment under this story or email [email protected].