Off to Camp

It certainly wasn’t his typical stomping grounds.  In fact, it wasn’t typical stomping grounds for any of the over-privileged children that fill my life, and his.  Like most of the mothers I know, I’m doing my best to help my son understand just how blessed we are, but that doesn’t make him any less over-privileged.  The wealth of suburban America surrounds the child in every direction – at the private school he attends, in his upper middle class neighborhood where all the kitchens have been updated and every two-car garage is filled to capacity, at the country club where he sits in a chair beside an Olympic sized pool and complains because there isn’t anyone to play with.  The majority of Charlie’s life experiences have taken place among well-manicured lawns and people with full bellies and fuller pocketbooks.  This is neither responsible nor right, but it is reality.  So, as I said, this wasn’t his typical stomping grounds.

There was more dirt than grass, and weeds . . . lots of them.  There was a faded tennis court with a rusty fence.  There was a lake with leaves littering its surface.  There were cracked sidewalks, worn out buildings, and a dining hall in serious need of a paint job.  And in his cabin, the one with the bathroom that hadn’t seen a can of Lysol in months and the mattresses that might actually have been purchased before my own mother was born, there was a hole at least the size of a small raccoon in the window (aka screen).

This was camp.  And I was leaving him there for a week.

Letting go isn’t one of my strengths.  People with OCD like to have control of everything, especially our children.  I realize I’m losing control at a rapid pace as my son ages, and honestly, I’ve never really had the control I deem so vital in our parent-child relationship.  It’s been an illusion from the start and continues to fade with every act of independence he takes.  Still, Charlie is over ten years old and I’ve never spent an entire week away from him.  And while I understand it’s not a loss of control that makes each day he’s gone feel so bizarre, the not knowing is still wreaking havoc on my heart.   Seven days of not knowing what he’s doing or eating or saying.  Seven days of not knowing what time he went to sleep and woke up, whether he was polite to adults, if he wore sunscreen, washed his hands, brushed his teeth. 

He didn’t look back when we left him.  I did, over and over, wishing I could hear what he was saying to his friend as they walked towards cabin number six.  There was no reason for him to turn around.  We had said our good-byes, given our hugs, declared our love, offered our reminders.

He was ready, excited.  He was the one who had initiated this life event after all, two years in the making since the first time he asked to attend sleep away camp.  I declined then, immediately, silently making ridiculous promises to God if he would just make sure my child never asked to leave again.  God denied my request.  He knew I could never keep the promises.  He also knew that even if I could, it wasn’t what he wanted for me anyway.  What he wanted was to provide a lesson in letting go. 

There have been many such lessons along the way.  There will be many more ahead.  They are the hardest lessons I’ve ever had to learn.

He didn’t look back when we left him.  He smiled and gestured, not the least bit disillusioned by the weeds, the cracks, the holes.  I held back tears as the space between us grew, have every day since, especially at night, when the house feels all wrong because one family member is missing from under its roof.

He will walk away again.  He is much better at this letting go thing than I am, and while it pricks my heart with the knowledge that his leaving has forever been inevitable, I am thankful.  Because although it’s a difficult prayer to lift up to the only One who is in control, I know it’s the right prayer for a mother . . . and I will continue to say it every time my child leaves.

May the Lord be with you as you go, my sweet son.  May you go with a smile.  May you go with a friend.  And may you go with complete certainty that the path you are on is the right one, so that you never, ever have to look back.
 

“I see children as kites.  You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground.  You run with them until you’re both breathless.  They crash . . . you add a longer tail.  They hit the rooftop . . . you pluck them out of the spout.  You patch and comfort, adjust and teach.  You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them someday they’ll fly. 

Finally, they are airborne.  But they need more string and you keep letting it out and with each twist of the ball of twine, there is a sadness that goes with the joy because the kite becomes more distant and somehow you know it won’t be long before that beautiful creature will snap the lifeline that bound you together and soar as it was meant to soar . . . free and alone. 

Only then do you know that you did your job.”
 (Author unknown)

 

Happy 10th birthday, Charlie.  I see your kite rising higher by the day.  It is both glorious and heartwrenching to watch as it moves into the distance - further away from me with every glance I take.  But it is such a beautiful kite,  and I will watch is as long as I possibly can . . . waiting, hoping, anxiously anticipating exactly where it will go, and praying  that wherever it ends up, I will be near enough to see. 

 

 

I have CDO. It’s like OCD, but the letters are in order like they should be. - From a
t-shirt in a catalog that somehow ended up in my mailbox this week. Coincidence???

I think not.

My friends, I have reached a new level of maturity. Frankly, I’m thinking my status as supermom might need reinstatement, for this week at least. I, control freak since birth and lifetime queen of wanting things done exactly like I want them done, have allowed my children to put colored lights on our Christmas tree this year.

Yep, you read it correctly.

Colored Christmas lights . . . on my tree . . . right now.

There are blue ones. There are yellow ones. There are red and green ones. There are even, heaven help me, pink ones. Pink lights are twinkling all over my Fraser Fir at this very moment and I don’t have a single urge to rip them off and replace them with white ones. Well, I might have a teensy eensy weensy little tiny urge. But I will not act on it.

Like I said, I have reached a new pinnacle of maturity.

Christmas lights have been a long-standing issue in our home. They simply don’t bring out the best in my husband and me. Well, mainly me. While we both employ the squinty eye technique to determine precise placement, we don’t go about the placement in the same manner. I prefer to start low and stay there until all dark spaces are illuminated. Adam likes to wind up and down and around the tree in a more haphazard spreading of the bulbs. After several Christmases and countless hours attempting to undo tangled strings of lights, we worked out a solution to this particular problem. Adam puts the lights on the Christmas tree every year in whatever manner he so chooses. When it’s time for the tree to come down, he tosses it in the woods with the lights still wound a hundred times around its branches. A wise budget decision? No. Vital to our marriage? Absolutely.

Last year, a new issue popped up in regards to Christmas lights. While I was off shopping one lovely Saturday morning, Adam and Charlie hung icicle lights on our front porch. Sound lovely? Well certainly, they are lovely . . . at night. But what about the other twelve hours of each day. How are you supposed to conceal all that tacky cording and those hideously large white plugs as they hang down in front of your beautifully wreathed front door?

I apologize if I’m offending anyone. To each his own – I love that about life. And I admit, I have seen good-looking icicle lights that probably cost a lot more than the ones my well-meaning husband purchased. At my house, however, cheap icicle lights on the front porch are not on the pre-approved list of appropriate holiday decorations. The beauty they provide from dusk until my bedtime is simply not worth it to me, possibly because I go to bed at 9:30.

I held it together in front of my son when this atrocity of Christmas preparation occurred last December. I oooed and ahhhed over the lights while Charlie was standing there. I admired his handiwork and raved about his creativity. Later, however, my husband received a verbal lashing of the worst kind. It was ugly. It was mean. It was completely un-Christmaslike. The icicle lights stayed up until December 26th, but only because the mother in me actually has a soul.

My husband and I had a pre-decorating discussion the following fall, solving the problem before it presented itself for a second time. The icicle lights are once again shining brightly at our house this December, only they’re on the back deck instead of the front porch. Still not my favorite, but a reasonable compromise, don’t you think, and certainly a clear sign of my evolving maturity.

As we’ve begun preparing for Christmas 2011 in the last couple of weeks, the kids have been helping me create ornaments for an advent tree. We have a book that traces the lineage of Christ through the Old Testament and gives specific Bible stories that show what led to Jesus’ birth. We are making an ornament to go along with each story. To further display my growing maturity, I must tell you that I have readily relinquished important tasks to my children during our recent ornament making sessions; tasks that involve markers, paint, pipe cleaners, glue, feathers, cotton balls, sequins, and (pray for me on this one) glitter. Our carpet is somehow sparkling and there is a lamb on our advent tree that looks like he’s robbing a bank, but still, it’s been hands off for me.

I’m not sure what set off my fresh take on Christmas. I suppose my laidback approach might be a sign of defeat. Perhaps I’m learning to wave the white flag in this war we affectionately call parenting. And make no mistake about it, my friends – it is a war. We are at war with the world and all the wonderfully awful things in it that can keep our children from being and doing what is good and right. When my kids were young, it was easy to convince them that their desires were the same as mine. Now, they know what they want, they tell me what they want, and I have to decide if what they want lines up with what I want for them. I’m fairly certain that as my children grow, the chance that their desires and mine will line up is going to get a whole lot slimmer, and quite frankly, the color of the lights on a Christmas tree isn’t a battle I’m up for fighting.

Maybe, though . . . maybe my carefree attitude exists because I finally decided to embrace the reality of Christmas, which is that it really is all about the kids. Well, it’s REALLY all about Jesus. But after that, it’s totally about the kids. I want Christmas to be magical for my kids. The wreath on our front door doesn’t need to be fancy. It simply announces to the world that we believe in the hope and peace that Christmas has to offer. Our mantel doesn’t need to look like it belongs on the cover of a magazine. It only needs to hold the stockings with my children’s names on them. We don’t need to wrap our tree with the perfect ribbon at just the right angle. It’s beautiful because it’s full of the symbols that remind Charlie and Libby of everything that is important to our family – love and life and fun and God. The gifts don’t have to be numerous and they certainly don’t need to be expensive. They just need to show the people we care about that they are special to us.

I’m pleased with the mature Christmas I’m having in 2011. I’m proud of the way I’m letting go of perfection and trying to bask in the glory of the holiday season instead. My cards don’t have the ideal picture, my tree leans slightly to the right, and the swags of garland on my staircase are a bit uneven. But I have an adoring husband. I have friends who care about me. I have a home. I have shoes on my feet, clothes in my closet, food in my refrigerator, gifts under my tree, Jesus in my heart. And I have two healthy children, my dreams come true, who are counting down the days until December 25th with pure excitement, and who are happy because they asked if they could have colored lights on their Christmas tree, and their mama remembered what it was all about, smiled, and said . . . yes.