Yeah. I have a Teenager.

So this week, two big things happened.

1. My oldest kid turned 13.

2. Said oldest kid went to camp for 2 weeks.

Man! I’ve got this parenting thing down. Teenagers? No problem! Ship ‘em off!

Just kidding. It’s actually his third summer at the same camp, and he’s been harassing me to sign him up since March.  I went there as a child, so I feel really comfortable with it. It’s 100 years old, and hasn’t changed since I attended. Still no AC in the cabins, still the same huge cedar dining hall, still the same docks where the boats are moored.

When I dropped him off, he practically had the door open before I was in park. “It’s cool, Mom, you can just stay in the car, I’ll drag my trunk down…”

“Ummm, no, honey, they actually want me to sign you in and stuff. And I want to meet your counselor…”

“MOM! No! It’s totally fine…”

But much to his chagrin, I got out, taking the little ones with me. We signed him in, watched him get checked for lice (Good call, Camp! Man, I would have been embarassed if he had them. But he doesn’t let ME get close enough to check!)

Then, in a few short minutes, he was gone, absorbed in the gaggle of boys comparing notes on the video games they weren’t allowed to bring. “Oh, no, you can totally beat that level, you just have to do up, up, side press A and B…”

The little ones and I left, and wandered down to the water. I think technically we were supposed to leave, but we just really didn’t want to. We took off our shoes, and stuck our feet in and watched the boats.

I watched the island where I used to wait for my turn to waterski, the one where I once fell asleep with a wedgie and woke up with a criminal sunburn on my caboose. THAT was a tough one to explain when I went for my Solarcaine.

I waited for a flood of memories, for nostalgia, for a connection to the wild tempest adolescent I had been when I lived at this place…and it just wasn’t there. It was the strangest feeling, as though I were visiting a place I had been a tourist briefly instead of one where I had spent weeks on end, the first place I had been truly independent and autonomous. It made me feel, more so than anything else has,  like maybe I’m kind of a grownup.  (I know, the three kids didn’t do it?)

Ahoy, matey!

We messed around, with the little ones talking about when they would be big enough to go to camp. I remembered when I came home from my first summer there- I’d been introduced to the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, and truly, nothing was ever the same. I raved to my mom about them, and she was kind enough to not laugh at my teenaged attempt to school her. “You’ve GOT to check them out, Mom, these beatles guys are, like, SO amazing…”

Maybe J will come home raving about this retro guy named Neil Young. Maybe by the time the littles are old enough to go, they can tell me about the Clash.

So in a few weeks, I’ll have a real, honest to God full fledged teenager on my hands. But for the moment, I’m so excited for him to be trying his wings and seeing how it feels to fly solo.

(ED. NOTE: In a week, I may be writing about how I’m on my way to hide in the treeline and spy on him with binoculars.)

E took this silly picture:

MWAH! xoxo