newjerseynewsroom.com

BY LORI SENDER

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

He's gone. The house is quiet. No one sitting on my lap as I type, grabbing at my waist as I walk into the kitchen. Our son is at camp. For a month. And suddenly, the cicadas outside are so very loud.

I know it will be good for him, this YMCA camp in the Berkshires, but still. Will he be okay? Will he be lonely? Chances are, most likely, he'll do just fine. Chances are, in late August when we see him again, he'll say he wants to go back next summer, "For two months!" And he'll have grown ever-so-slightly taller, and maybe a bit more mature, and maybe, just maybe, and this is the truly painful demarcation . . . my son will no longer be my little boy.

I never went to camp as a child. We had the beach, the ocean, and as my mother often said, "why would I put you in a schedule for the summer, when you're in one all year." I remember best that one summer in Bradley Beach, that perfect summer, when armed with some newly found independence I met kids from all over New Jersey. From Rahway and Cranford, Springfield and Union. It seemed the world was made up of 14-year-olds, as we'd make our way from our parents' beach to the Brinley Avenue teenage beach. At night it was the penny arcade, and it felt like all friends, all the time, with the ever-constant soul-searching-talking and walking. That summer, Bradley was my town for the taking.

I'm hoping this camp will be Ben's for the taking. I've tried to send him to a place, a version of what I had at Bradley, where his eyes will open wide with the thrill of meeting new friends, where a clearer sense of self will emerge, all within the heady background sounds and smells of the woods.

But he's only eleven. So young. And still, he hasn't written to us. By now he's probably having computer withdrawal, and, I was a bit shocked to see, his cabin doesn't have a bathroom.

"How will he go to the bathroom at night?" a friend asks on the phone.

"I guess he must leave to another cabin."

"Did you ask about bears?" she says.

My husband runs into a neighbor and tells him Ben is off at camp.

"A chance to reconnect with the wife," he says.

"Freedom!" another friend says.

Maybe tomorrow I'll start to feel the freedom. Maybe in a few days my husband and I will run to a midday movie. And finally, I'll finish that book.

As an adult I've learned to appreciate a lake. To love kayaking and the solitude of boating. To relax in the coolness of a summer forest. I expect Ben will feel this way too. I suspect that camp is an experiment for children that rarely fails, where friends plus nature equals growth and fun. At least that's what I tell myself, that it's sort of a freshwater Bradley Beach. But let's face it, there's one distinct difference: it's minus the family.