A few weeks back, our son Lucas, age 9 – who’s surely owed an adventure after the masked-up pandemic summer of 2020 – selected these electives for his upcoming time at sleepaway camp: the climbing wall, the ninja warrior course, and not one but two sessions of soccer.
My picks when I went to camp at Lucas’ age were a touch different: drama, singing, and two sessions of arts and crafts.
Outdoorsy and athletic, Lucas told me and his other father, Jack, that he wants to maximize the experience and attend camp for all seven weeks: “Dad and Pops, I can’t wait to get to the woods.” Quiet and flabby, I could only bear to attend for a fraction of that: “Mommy, do I really have to go?”
See, I was never cut out for sleepaway camp. But by the summer’s end, I had changed – and it was because of camp and specifically, a handful of supportive counselors.
The great indoors, and outdoors
While too young to acknowledge I was gay, I was hardly fit to spend a summer with a bunch of boys in the wilderness. A lover of the great indoors, I was already deeply fixated on movies, TV and books. I shined in the schoolroom, far from the soccer field. I was attached to my mother, sister and my female teachers. As my cousin says, I was always one of the girls.
While the boys in my bunk were thrilled to play sports, I sat on the sidelines waiting for 3 p.m., when I got to dull the pain with M&M’s at the canteen. My nemesis, an aggressive kid named Micah, took advantage of my…
