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I had pinkie-sworn I'd be there early. Today was visitors' day at camp and a mother's job was to show up smiling and bearing a cache of contraband treats. A promise was a promise.
But when the alarm beeped at 5 a.m., I felt low on motherly love and high on exhaustion. I smacked the clock to stop its infernal noise, and got moving.
Still damp from a nanosecond shower, I dressed and flung treats into the hamster's cage. Feather Dusty, our daughter's beloved pet, would be staying home alone tonight. The tiny rodent stared at me with its shiny, pinhead eyes and chittered something in insane hamster-speak, but I didn't respond. Instead, I began to lug prepacked bags down our Riverdale home's shabby staircase and out the front door to the driveway.
I squared my shoulders, returned upstairs, and gave my husband a sharp poke that put a chirrup in his snores. When I threatened to keep prodding, he discontinued his nasal symphony, muttered something incomprehensible and staggered out of bed. Our five-year-old son was harder to budge, but my husband solved that problem by picking him up and strapping Junior, still pajama-clad, into our aging family van. And, as the sun peeked over the smog-smeared horizon, the three of us hit the open road.
Early morning fog obscured the road from time to time, but the strengthening rays of the sun soon chased away its ghostlike remnants. Traffic was light, and even with a stop along the way to gorge on doughnuts and get Junior dressed, we arrived at the camp in three hours flat.
A senior girl, standing importantly with her clipboard at the ready, checked us in. Did I see a flicker of disapproval when I mentioned our nine-year-old daughter's name? Perhaps it was my imagination. Yes, that was it, I decided, blithely ignoring the fact that we'd been talked to before by various educators about her impulsive and outgoing ways. Why look for clouds on such a sunshiny day?
Nevertheless, I was relieved when, after the tiniest of pauses, the counsellor smiled brightly and directed us to follow a volunteer to Land Sports.
And there our little girl was! Wearing an eye-popping combination of mismatched clothes and with long hair tangling in the breeze, she stood, ignoring an instructor's lecture on bow-and-arrow safety while she goofed it up on the fringes with a buddy. Our daughter's head snapped around when she heard us call her name. She ran to us with outstretched arms across the archery range and, for one heart-stopping moment, we didn't think she'd make it to us alive. The four of us merged in a group hug that was off the charts for joy and love – and relief. Nothing else mattered; we were together again.
A distraught counsellor, rattled by our daughter's near-death dash across the range, broke up our tableau. As upset as the older teen was, she cheered up when she released our child to us for the day, specifying that we were to bring her back to camp in time for supper.
Before leaving, we took a tour of the sleeping cabin. It was a no-frills structure, packed with eight bunks, all neatly arranged. There was no teenage leader in sight, but our daughter told us that this was just as well because her counsellor was the meanest, most unforgiving, sadistic tyrant ever. Having heard similar reviews over the years about teachers and instructors who had tried, and failed, to keep her in line, my husband and I just nodded and were grateful to be spared a meeting with yet another in a series of disapproving authority figures.
Arms wrapped around one another, we left the campground and spent the day enjoying the amenities of a nearby resort. We pedalled the pedal boat and played shark attack in the pool. We watched hummingbirds zip and zither and we drank sweet fizzy drinks that made Junior burp impressively, to the delight of his sister. Later, when the shadows began to lengthen, we all grew pensive. It was time to return our beloved girl to camp.
She wasn't ready to say goodbye, though, and we weren't, either. She wanted to show us her newly acquired trampoline skills. Plus, many other parents and family members were still milling about the property, so we held hands and went to the gymnastics area together. Our daughter cheered on her friends and took her turn as the afternoon waned and the mosquitoes whined.
All around the open meadow, hundreds of giant dragonflies hovered, gorging on the ample bug population. One, larger than Junior's outstretched hand, perched on his shoulder like a parrot on a pirate before whirring off in search of its next meal. And, as the little girls bounced and giggled, visitors' day came to an end.
Our daughter would come home the next week – just one kid on a crowded bus full of boisterous, fit and freckled girls. We hoped she'd arrive with a collection of new friends and happy memories. Until then, we were confident she'd make the most of every minute of camp time and she'd leave behind at least one exhausted counsellor who would never, ever consider childcare as a potential vocation.
In just a week, our house would once again rock with her explosive energy. Peace and quiet would be misty memories as our world reverted to its customary state of chaos. It would be pure bedlam.
We couldn't wait.
Sally Basmajian lives in Niagara-on-the-Lake.