Cancel Culture

Welcome to May.

This year April really has been, to quote T.S. Eliot in his poem The Wasteland, the cruelest month. I think it may have been his posthumous revenge for the disaster that was the movie Cats, which was originally a Broadway show based on poems that Eliot wrote about his aunt's "dear little cats" (whose thick accent made it sound like she was saying "Jellicle Cats").

And you thought that school was out for summer.

Haha, just kidding. I know that your kids' teachers have made sure that you know that school is definitely not out yet. The location might have changed, but the dates have not. And if you're like me it feels like the reminder emails informing you of what your kids have to do in order to pass first grade have not stopped, or even slowed down.

And if you're really like me you can add polite little reminders informing you that your first grader has not turned in half of his online work to the stack of emails piling up in your inbox.

In my first grader's defense, he actually did do the work, he just forgot to press "submit" when he was done. We might not be good at remote learning, but we aren't totally ignoring it. 

Anyway.

This year, April really did live up to the reputation of being the cruelest.

First we observed Passover online which meant all of the food and none of the help with the dishes. Then in-person school was discontinued for the rest of the year so while I won't have to face all of the teachers I'm offending in these posts in person, I still have to figure out algebra.

And the latest in the string of disappointments and cancellations: summer camp is cancelled.

It started with the local rec camp, which, fair. There are a lot of moving parts in a camp that spends half of it's time at amusement parks, water parks, baseball parks, and the local park. How can they book field trips when nothing is open right now and we don't have a clear idea of when they will be open for groups of 350? A summer of playing cards in an empty middle school did not sound like it was worth the $300 a week.

Although after the past two months, it might be hard to put a price on getting a break from the kids....

But then they came for the overnight camps....

I know, I know, why did I think that overnight camp would still happen? After all, putting a bunch of kids in rustic cabins with teenagers and college students in charge is not exactly a recipe for good health and hygiene. My kids think tooth brushing is optional on days that end in Y and college kids think nothing of chugging a beer that has had a dirty ping pong ball tossed into it over and over again.

At least, I think that's how beer pong works. Did I mention that my college wasn't really a party school?

And yet I was hopeful that the overnight camp that I had signed my kids up for would find a way to prevail. Maybe they could quarantine the counselors for two weeks before camp started, perform a quick temperature check while boarding the camp bus, and give all of the kids disinfectant showers upon arrival at camp.

Common sense tells me that all three of the above ideas are totally ridiculous. Quarantining a bunch of 18-22 year olds for two weeks with nothing to do is a recipe for an entirely different kind of public health crisis. Temperature checks are not a guarantee that the virus isn't hiding out and also have you tried taking a nine year old's temperature lately? It would be easier to give an octopus a rectal exam. And telling a bunch of Jewish kids that they are going to have to disinfect themselves by taking a group shower upon getting off the buses is just...wrong.

Too soon?  Probably.  But these are dark times, and I'm going there.

Anyway, it turns out that all of the Jewish summer camps got together and tried to figure out a way to make camp happen, and when they couldn't come up with a solution to appease the CDC, the governors in at least six different states, and a bunch of Jewish mothers, they decided collectively to cancel overnight camp this summer.

Because to Jews, it's never just a cold.  

Last night I was on a Zoom call with a leadership cohort I'm involved in through my synagogue and before our speaker started his spiel, we went around the table -er- grid and gave updates as to what is going on in our lives. There was a lot of talk about the challenges of trying to work and educate our kids at the same time but most of the updates ended with "but I really shouldn't complain...." or "but we are feeling really blessed to have all of this time together with our kids and the au pair."

Lest the rabbi or anyone else think that being upset about not being able to do our jobs without being serenaded by a sixth grader's trombone practice was being unappreciative of God's gifts (although God probably could have gifted that sixth grader with a little more musical talent)....

But one thing that I found interesting was how many parents had heard the news about overnight camp being cancelled and had chosen to keep the news from their kids for the time being. This was also something I noticed among my other friends who'd signed their kids up for 4-8 weeks of campfires and color wars and clothing swaps and coming back with stories about their new girlfriend who was so hot but you wouldn't know her because she's from camp.

No one wanted to be the bearer of bad news so they were either waiting for their kids to find out about it from social media or from a text from that out of state significant other letting them know that they will not be getting to second base this summer - on or off the field.

I too was nervous about breaking the news to my kids. It was my six year old who had led the charge last summer when he heard from a camp counselor at his day camp about how much fun sleep away
camp was and then had it reinforced by his cousin when she came home from her three and a half week stay at the same camp. He'd been talking about it for months, watching YouTube videos about overnight camp, and has seen every camp-themed movie and TV show.  Twice.

The funny thing is, I was not a camp kid.  In fact, all I wanted growing up was a summer with nothing to do but read a book or sit and sketch. This was partly because I grew up in an area where nobody went to summer camp, or if they did it was for a week or two, tops. My friends spent their days at the pool or the lake or running in and out of each other's sprinklers, sun-in and johnson & johnson perched next to their boom boxes and YM magazines. Meanwhile my mom spent the winter going to camp fairs and finding the perfect niche (read: arts and craftsy and not too sporty) camp where my sister and I would be able to hone our skills in whatever our passion du jour was, even if it meant schlepping us to two different day camps at a time or driving to upstate Michigan or coastal Maine to give us those experiences.

I realize now it was all part of her plan to nurture our creativity, enrich our summers and not let us waste any of our brain cells (or layers of skin) laying out in the sun with tinfoil and baby oil. At the time, though, it felt like she was shipping us off so she could get a break when all I wanted to do was sit in a hammock with a stack of books. As it was, I spent much of my time at sleep away camp looking for a quiet place to read. Luckily there were other similarly inclined bookworms who would join me and are now some of my favorite Facebook friends so....cool? 

As a parent now, I realize that everything I thought about my mom then and everything I know about her now is true. Yes, she wanted a break.  She wanted a break from cooking and serving meals, which she did every. single. night. She wanted a break from being a chaufer and a social director. She wanted to spend some quality time with my dad, to sit in the bleachers at an Indians game, to go out to dinner with her friends without getting a babysitter.

But she also wanted to give us the camp experience which she had had.

She wanted us to have new experiences and make friends with someone from a different culture. This was how I ended up spending two summers at a camp in Maine which boasted classes in llama care and counselors from Australia. Personally, I found the campers from New York to be the most fascinating species of them all.

She wanted us to be exposed to new foods (but healthy ones!) which is why that camp served hummus and alfalfa sprouts at every meal.  That also might explain why I will defend Hawaiian pizza to this day.  When given the choice of natural peanut butter on sprouted grain bread or pineapples on a pizza, I chose exotic. 

She wanted us to experience having to be responsible for ourselves and our belongings which is why between my sister and I one of us (not naming names) suffered from pink-eye at least twice in a single summer after forgetting to send our dirty towels to the laundry.

And that is what I had wanted from this summer. Both the break - from serving lunch and planning activities - and the experience of a lifetime that they would never forget.

Although maybe not the part with the pink-eye.

I wanted my boys to meet other kids from exotic locales like Israel and Indiana. I wanted them to try new activities like waterskiing and making their beds. I wanted them to realize that if they left their clothes on the floor there would be no one there to pick them up and if they had to wear wet, dirty underwear the next day that would be their problem, not mine.

Who am I kidding? There's no way they'd be changing their underwear during three weeks at camp.  Which is why I was only planning on sending two pairs.

And so yesterday morning after the news broke that there would be no overnight camp found me in a dark place. I was crying tears of disappointment for my kids and for myself while at the same time knowing that this was a very first-world problem to have. I was feeling sorry for them while also knowing that there are others with far worse problems than ours, and feeling sorry about that too.

My kids picked up on my mood and asked me what was going on.  With a shaky voice I told them, "Camp has been cancelled."  Their faces grew sad, then serious.  I braced myself for the tears that I was sure were coming.

My nine year old shrugged. "Guess we'll just have to go to Grandma's."

And that was pretty much it. Because, like me at eleven years old, my kids don't realize what they will be missing by being home. And I can bring some of camp to them by letting them sleep out under the stars or at least in the basement (same amount of spiders either way), introducing them to new food like tofu kebabs (because learning to grill is on my to-do list for the summer) and making them a job wheel to spin every morning to see who gets to sweep the floor and who is stuck with toilet duty (Hehe. I said Duty.) It will be just like camp, but without the pink-eye (God willing) and the post-camp bragging about the girlfriend from another town (although my six year old just figured out how to give himself a hickey on his arm, so there's that...).

And if Mom needs a break, there's always Grandma's.