The warm mama in the warm car
I‘m about to pick up my daughter from a four-day field trip that she took with the rest of her 4th grade class. There were tears before she left and so I tried to not share my own stories of camp because they are not exactly uplifting – but more filled with homesickness, the memory that still fills me with that hollow feeling – a grasping and a gasping, like no amount of breath will ever fill you.
I remember having to go away at that age because, again, some parents and teachers thought it would be good for our collective 9-year old self esteem. Like my own daughter, Idon’t think I was quite ready for such a long time from home, so I cried before I left, too.
I remember everyone else looking like they were having so much fun. I remember, at bedtime that first night, Debbie Bernstein and Amy Woo giggling under their scratchy covers and playing with their flashlights while Mrs. Rasmussen said in her strident trying-to-be-sweet voice to quit it already.
I remember the food designed for inexpensive mass consumption, particularly the tacos: the ground beef that left oily orange skid marks as it slid off the spoon and the soggy iceberg lettuce sprinkled on top.
I remember the “breakout sessions” conducted in the dining hall that smelled of Pine Sol and last night’s onions. The linoleum floors squeaked under our shoes as we raced to arrange ourselves by height or any of the other ice-breaking, self-esteem-building games they made us do.
I wondered if it achieved the desired effect on everyone else. All it did for me was make me look around and wonder why I was so different – why I was the only one who wanted to go home and sit at my own kitchen table with my own momma. Looking back on it, I think everyone was homesick and I just wasn’t as good at recognizing when people are faking it as I am now. Now I suspect that most of us fight the same battles – it’s just that some of us are better at concealing it.
This particular camp was fond of sprinkling cinnamon on things, from hot cocoa to the crusty custard we had for dessert each night. I still associate the flavor of cinnamon with that throat closing sense of homesickness.
My daughter, as our hands finally parted a few days back, asked me if I could please be there right at 11:45 so I could pick her up right off the bus. I will be there at 11:30, waiting for her to pull in the school parking lot. And then I will take her out for lunch and I will let her order a Shirley Temple to drink. Two if she wants them.
I know she has to go away and do these things. I know it’s good for her. But I can still buy her lunch when she gets back and be the warm mama in the warm car in the icy cold parking lot. Some days, it’s all you can do.
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