Summer Camp... Guilt and Joy

     Tomorrow I will take one of my cherubs to a summer camp where she will be staying for 12 days.  I can barely wait.  It is hard to tell who needs it more.  I feel guilty for looking forward to her being gone. It seems awful and yet I really need the time without her to regroup and recharge. The camp is a new one to us. She has gone to church camp for a week at a time in past summers and although she fights going every time... when she is there she loves it.  This camp is MUCH less expensive and is primarily for foster children.  Because of the typical challenges of kids in care the camp has designed a program with extra emphasis on building self-esteem, healthy risk taking, and even has a reading specialist on staff to help the kids improve their reading skills.  On top of that it is all girls so that will be new for her too.  I am hoping that she will really grow from the experience.  I am hoping that she loves it.  They have a continuing program for older girls that could even develop into a summer job as a counselor for her.  She desperately needs something like that.  

     The camp is a two hour drive from here but after the last few weeks I will cheerfully drive it. I feel like the parent who is counting down the days until the new school year starts. Parents of adolescents have long since traded the tears of kindergarten parents separated from their "babies" for the high kicks of parents temporarily freed from adolescent whining and confrontations.  Like them, I look forward to doing a happy dance once the drop off  is done. Yes, I will still have the other two kiddos, so there will still be challenges. But I have learned that when you have a group of kids, removing even one... any one, changes and improves the dynamics for about a week.  Of course the remaining kids use that to "prove" that the absent child is completely to blame for all discord in the family. Then I have to quietly point out that when any one of the other children is gone, the same thing happens.  Plus it is always nice for the kids to discover to they actually miss home,  to discover they actually miss each other. And, it is even nice for me to discover that I miss them.  

     So tomorrow we will get in the car, drive up country and drop off one of my cherubs for fourteen days before returning to pick her up.  While we are apart I can dream that she will come back reformed and mellowed.  She can dream that I will become the perfect parent and her siblings will no longer be annoying.  Her siblings will dream of both.  It is unlikely any of our dreams will come true.  But we will probably all be better and healthier for the break, for the change.  And... we can still dream.