Sleep-Away Camp: My Daughter, My Self
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen August 3, 2009
Last week, we put our 10-year-old daughter, our middle child, on the bus for her first overnight camp experience. Though she didn’t know any other girls at camp, as she boarded the bus she gave me a smile electric with excitement.
She is doubtlessly doing fine. I, however, am having some separation anxiety. I recall from when my 15-year-old son went to overnight camp the first time how painful it was — for me. He had a good time. By his second summer overnight camp experience, though, I was just happy to have the break.
Expert advice I’ve read says not to tell the camper how much you are missing her — rather focus on the fun she’s (hopefully) having.
Personally, I hated camp. I truly never had a good time. I lacked confidence, coordination and struggled to manage getting around the campgrounds, especially at night. We didn’t know it at the time, but I was legally blind — good reason not to be able to cope on those night hikes, but at the time I just chalked it up as one more camp thing I was lousy at.
Bookish, blindish, content to stay on my bunk all day reading and hoping someone would be nice to me. Not much has changed in the intervening decades, actually. Lest I over-identify with my daughter, however, I must remind myself that she is a very different child than I was. Though a bit shy at the outset, she is a tremendously social creature with an innate gift for relationships and very much “in her body,” good at sports and all manner of group activities.
In all likelihood, my delicious daughter will do great at camp.
Hopefully she won’t meet the girl-equivalent of author A.J. Jacobs, who in this video belatedly apologizes to Scott Blonkin for tormenting him when they were at sleep-away camp.
Next year, we hope to send our youngest to overnight camp, too. When I wondered aloud, to my husband, what we’ll do with ourselves if they’re all gone for part of the summer, he quickly said “Paris!” Sounds good to me.
In the meantime, here’s some chuckle-worthy blog reading about Jewish summer camps from hell.
Time to run. I’ve got to assemble and mail a care package that will, within the contents of one brown box, communicate to my new camper that she is loved and missed (but not too much, don’t want to worry her, after all), and that her mommy knows the exact perfect thing to send her to make her happy and ensure continued popularity with her bunkmates.
The hard salamis my Oma sent me, back in the day, didn’t exactly endear me to my cabin-mates, though I did feel loved as I looked at it dangling from the bottom of the bunk above me.
Hopefully I’ll come up with something a little less pungent.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
