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Today, despite not taking any of my usual mood stabilizers, I bounded out of bed with a smile on my lips and a spring in my step for Saturday is the ‘BIG’ day. No, I’m not getting married, (been there, done that) nor am I having another bundle of horrors delivered to me by a flying monkey, er uh…I mean having a bundle of joy delivered to me by the stork. The blessed event I speak of is the apex of my social calendar for it is nothing less than my literal and emotional emancipation from parenting; the delivery of my son Ethan to summer camp. This morning, Ethan and I will board a plane bound for New York City, where he and I will meet the charter bus destined for the bucolic White Mountains of New Hampshire, where for seven blissful weeks, professional, highly-paid, total strangers will selflessly assume the parenting responsibilities that should be mine. Ethan will play tennis, soccer (oh shit – I guess it’s FOOTBALL now as everyone who’s anyone suddenly gives a fuck about the World Cup) do arts & crafts, and develop lifelong friendships with other rich, entitled, east coast brats.
To our native California friends, the notion of sending one’s children to camp during the summer is a completely alien concept. I’ve had more soccer mommies, I mean FOOTBALL mommies, castigate me for this one act of unmitigated selfishness than for my out-of-control drinking, carousing or criminal sense of fashion, for in their opinion sending Ethan to summer camp is tantamount to white slaving him to South America.
“How can you send him to summer camp, don’t you love him?” Neighborhood Botox mommy asks. As I stare at her, I think to myself, that’s one loaded fucking question!
“Define love,” I respond.
“I don’t know….like won’t you miss him?”
“Define miss him.”
By now, Botox mommy is shrugging her shoulders and giving me a pained look. ”Well, I could NEVER send my Preston to summer camp, I mean unlike you, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”
“Is that a question or an accusation,” I ask frankly.
Botox mommy is now flustered and realizes that she’s stepped her Fred Segal-attired foot in it. ”It’s neither…I mean..uh…uh.. I just love my son so much and he’s so much FUN to take care of.”
Fun. Fun?! Would I consider taking care of my son Ethan FUN? The chauffeuring, the brown bag lunches, the interminable questions, the lonely nights locked in my house guarding a sleeping eight year old, fun? I knew that I had tons of time to mull the childcare ‘fun’ concept over in my mind for on our flight to New York, I had the foresight to fly business class and wisely placed Ethan in the FAR, FAR, FAR reaches of coach.
(To be continued)
Oh, you’re my hero. I’m so ready for sleepaway camp. Not sure if my son is. But my husband definitely is not, so it will have to wait another long year. I’ll just live vicariously through you.