As most of you know, parent visits here are not really a big thing. While we don’t discourage it (except for first-year campers), I guess the challenge of getting to Lake Nebagamon keeps the numbers of parents who make the trek up to the North Woods pretty small. This year, when it is all said and done, we will have had perhaps 12 families visit over the course of two months… out of some 300 kids… about 4%!
Now while I know I should spend these updates telling you all about the camper experience, today, I wanted to share a bit about a mom’s experience here yesterday. As background, her son is 14 years old and has been coming to camp since he was 8. He is a devout Nebagamon guy who loves it here and tries to make the most out of his experience every summer. Still, over the course of his time here, his parents had never visited him (partially because, until two years ago, they lived in London). During the course of this past off-season, and through some letters home this year, he had started to gently inquire as to whether they were going to visit him in his penultimate summer. So, on Sunday, I got a note from his mom inquiring about feasibility of a surprise visit.
(A quick note here: PARENTS, please DO NOT do the surprise visit thing without working through us. This will help us avoid the situation that occurred many years ago when a mom showed up for the surprise visit with her Lumberjack son on a very stormy day. I still bear the scars of having to walk outside in an absolute downpour to tell her that her son was on a big trip to Isle Royale and would not be back for a week. She immediately let me have several pieces of her mind in that pouring rain… it was quite a scene. And yes… I’m not sure why I decided that in the midst of a deluge was the best time and place to share this disappointing news. Not my brightest camp directing moment.)
But with this mom, we worked out some logistics and made a plan for her to arrive here late yesterday afternoon. What I did not know was that her son had been training for his Golden Goggles test yesterday afternoon. Golden Goggles is an achievement down at the swimming program that has been accomplished by about 20 kids in the history of camp – it requires a boy to swim 200 laps (almost 5 miles) during the course of one day. It is, needless to say, a significant challenge. As chance would have it, the mom arrived here at camp when he had 20 laps remaining. I debated with myself about whether or not to bring her down to the waterfront to watch, as I worried it would be a distraction for the boy. But, ultimately, I remembered who pays the bills and decided to bring her down to the water!
As we approached the waterfront, we saw two swimmers. One, of course, was her son, and the other was his village director who had decided to spend some time in the water swimming laps with the boy for support. On the dock were another half-dozen staff members all cheering the boy on. As the mom and I walked out onto the dock, I was so curious to see how her presence would mess with the boy’s labors. He missed us completely at first, but than at his second turn around, he noticed her. The moment of truth… and it elicited one look of surprise and a quick grunt. And then back to the laps!
For the next 30 minutes or so, the mom and I stood on the dock and watched the boy swim. Most of the time we just stood in silence, soaking in the scene that featured her dedicated son working really hard through a difficult physical challenge as more and more people arrived to support him. As the end approached, several of the boy’s cabinmates jumped in the water to swim the final laps with him while others began to chant cheers of support. I could not have been prouder. This was not a choreographed scene. We didn’t do this because a mom was coming to camp and we wanted to look good. This was just who we are as a camp community at this time of year – a collection of people who show up for each other and support each other through moments of challenge and triumph.
The mom and I just stood and watched. I stole the occasional glance at her… and while our pollen count has been kind of high this summer, I was pretty sure that the water gathering around her eyes was not all because of seasonal allergies. When the boy completed his 200 laps, his friends all hugged him in the lake. He popped out of the water, hugged his counselor, hugged his village director… and finally made it to his mom. As much as my narrative here would be better if the mom-hug had been a brief one that he moved on from to others immediately, this was not the case. Their hug was long and clearly meaningful to the both of them. He clearly was very proud of what he had done, and it was even more special because she watched him do it. She held him tightly and dealt with those seasonal allergies that were making her eyes water more and more conspicuously – the kind of composure that moms are forced to achieve sometimes.
Yesterday’s parent visit was one of the more special camper/parent moments I have ever witnessed.
While watching this all play out yesterday, something else became pretty clear to me about the parent visit. Certainly, there are some kids who really want the parent visit – and virtually none of them would refuse it if their parents offered the visit. But the visit is really more for the parents than the boys. Four or eight weeks is a long time to be away from your child, and… well, we miss them. After all, these kids have been the central focus of our lives since the day they were born… and then they’re gone for as long as two months. That can be tough on a parent. So they take a trip up to camp because, of course, their boy needs to see them. Without a doubt, he could not make it through the entire session unless he saw them, asked them all about work, hugged them, and removed the smudges of dirt from their parents’ faces with a licked thumb… the poor kid.
Don’t get me wrong. I totally understand. I am SURE I would do the same thing. Two of my boys are off at college now (well, one actually just graduated), and I miss them so much sometimes that it hurts. My mother used to tell me that it was important for her to see where I was sleeping when I was off at camp, or at college, or in my post-college years. I had always thought that this was so that she could ensure that it was up to her standards. But now, through my experience in this job, watching other parents come through here needing to see where their kids sleep, I get it. She wasn’t worried about whether or not the bed and the room were just right; she just needed to connect with me, see where I was, see where I slept… so that she could imagine me there and sleep better herself.
All is well in the North Woods…
