Summer Camp in the South

It’s not university, but dropping our kids at summer camp on the other side of the country for two weeks felt like the first big release of control we’ve taken.

In anticipation of the twins turning ten this summer, we talked about how we need to practice independence, make some gains in it, long before it’s real. So we did.

Or rather, they did.

And boy did they make it look fun.

Arden went to a camp for girls a mile away from Henry’s camp for boys, so this was their first time apart from each other. We weren’t sure who they’d miss more — us or each other.

The camp is traditional in the sense that you only communicate with your child by writing letters. But they have an app for parents where they post daily pictures of campers, so those who want to obsess are free to do so.

Do they also provide facial recognition technology that sends picture of your kids so you don’t have to scroll through hundreds of others, frantically searching? Yes, yes they do. Did I check it virtually every 30 minutes? Yes, yes I did.

Then one August morning when we were back at home, I walked into the kitchen, saw the front page of the WSJ and gasped.

“What’s wrong?” Mike said from the other room.

“They wrote an article about my psychosis! The paper reported on my actual summer!”

Right then, my dad called.

“Whatever you do, don’t read the front page of the paper today.”

“Too late!” I shrieked.

“Ooooh, baby have they got your number!” he laughed and laughed.

“I should be offended, but instead I’m just annoyed they didn’t call me for a quote. They called Jennifer from Maine.” Mike heard this exchange and walked over to see what the fuss was about and read the headline:

“Obsessed Parents Overanalyze Photos of Their Kids at Camp.”

Being mocked was tempered by the sweet hug of realizing I was very much not alone. Thousands of parents scrutinized every photo to assess their child’s emotional wellbeing. It wasn’t just me.

Their camps are located in the hills of Asheville, NC, so after dropping them off we drove to Charleston, SC for a week of getting to know the place Travel + Leisure calls “America’s Favorite City.”

We hadn’t even made it to our Airbnb when the first pics started coming through. Henry was first — playing some team game with a ball, shirt already off. We were reassured he was already a happy camper.

Then the evening photos:

We peeped him off to the side, shirtless and winding up for his turn at axe-throwing. Holy smokes, he’s off to the races.

Then came Arden’s first photos, a little more reticent, which made me hem and haw over whether she was happy yet.

I needn’t have worried; Color Night was afoot.

And with that, I could breathe. And pray. There was so much praying. The reason we sent them to camp was the same for us as it was for them: to learn how to trust the Lord with their lives. Harder than it looks.

Pray, release…and we were off to explore Charleston.

We took a morning walking tour that involved a lot of gasping. The architecture was so gorgeous we felt overwhelmed. It was fascinating to see such an old city be so well-preserved and residential. No skyscrapers, no big box stores. Just row upon row of charming homes with little plaques crediting their first owners in 1706, or 1719. The effect is quiet and unassuming, even when the homes are spectacular.

I sent one to my friend Lauren.

“Do we live in the wrong place?!” she wrote back.

As we walked through the brick-lined streets, gaping at stunningly beautiful homes, Mike and I discussed how the Pacific Northwest has natural beauty locked up, but its architecture is cold and modern, and its cities are currently experiencing dumpster-fire-level deterioration. Charleston was like a sparkling jewel by comparison. It was wonderfully stimulating to be in such a radically different place.

There was one other glaring difference: the punishing, relentless heat. Usually my boys only perspire when running after a ball or each other. Here, all it took was walking down the street.

Despite his antics in this photo, Hunter stepped into the humidity and with nothing but glee. It was like watching a tree frog encounter the rainforest for the first time. Like all his life we’d been keeping him from his natural habitat.

The heat made me develop a verbal tic; I didn’t mean to, but every ten minutes I compulsively had to say, “It’s so hot,” “I can’t believe how hot it is,” “I’m sweating out of every pore,” etc. All of us were doing this; it was involuntary. Hence the tic.

Except Hunter. “I love humidity!”

Based on the photos we got, the twins were not suffering the same fate. We kept seeing morning pictures of them in sweatshirts. Sweatshirts! In Charleston, you could not wear a sweatshirt if it was 3am.

(Henry clearly felt he had to rep as many West Coast teams as possible. Sand Diego hat, Denver sweatshirt, first day Mariners t-shirt. He had a large territory to cover in front of these East Coast kids.)

Our Charleston house was in a little town called Mt Pleasant, and it was aptly named because it was like Pleasantville. Wide, live oak-lined streets, stunning homes, kids pedaling around without helmets, and adorable teens headed out on dates in golf carts.

The golf carts were a cultural touchstone — every single resident had a golf cart, to the degree that it was the entirety of their 4th of July parade. We were the only people not in possession of a golf cart draped in Americana.

It was endearing and hilarious and surprising — the sheer quantity. Hundreds of Independence Day carts.

Here we are, so very independent from carts. Cartless.

Also twinless, which was far weirder. Every outing felt like a lie — we’re not a family of five. But every outing felt easier, because there were fewer heads to count.

I don’t think the twins were feeling the same emptiness.

They were putting on warrior headbands and heading off to camp-wide competitions.

One of the central elements to camp is skill-building and growth, so kids choose 6-8 skills to participate in during structured time. They also have plenty of time to run amok doing all the open activities, but the boys could choose from 36 skills – everything from archery, outdoor living, blacksmithing (!), woodworking, rock-climbing, to more mainstream sports like basketball, baseball, swimming, etc. Arden’s camp offered 51 skills, many like Henry’s, plus things like ceramics, drama, fire building, gardening, sports – she even took “Puppy Skill” where she trained a chocolate lab puppy. I mean, what on earth?

They offered to let us adopt her. I really should’ve seen that one coming.

Henry would later tell us that his main preoccupation was the food. It was mountains of delicious, kid-pleasing food. “Mom, they gave us beef with Fritos one night!”

Both kids could not recover from the joy of The Canteen (boys) and Store (girls). Every day after rest hour, they heard the bell and ran to these sugar shacks for two free items — any soft drink and a candy of their choice. This, to them, was nirvana.

It was no sugar shack, but we took the younger three to the famous Husk restaurant on Queen St, which might seem ill-advised, but they did fine. We prepped them to try Southern food (or shall I say, we prepped them that there would be no hamburgers and fries, no chicken tenders, no safe harbor on which to cling) and ordered most of the (small) menu so they could sample, and they did not hold back.

Because Southern food makes you close your eyes in reverie.

It’s a tossup for me which captivated me more: the Southern food or the Southern trees.

The live oaks that anchor every street are arresting. I’d be walking along, see a tree like this, and stand stock-still with my mouth open like I’d never seen a tree before. They’re beautiful in their colossal reach, completely still while they buzz from the cicadas filling their limbs.

As we approached Boone Hall Plantation, we had to stop the car and just stare in awe.

These trees may be as old as the hills (1743) and Boone Hall Plantation even older (1681), but this history lover felt shamefully torn on why she really came — it’s Allie’s summer house in The Notebook.

Remember when they broke up in this driveway? Sigh.

Did we take this picture due to the stunning beauty or because it’s where Noah rowed Allie in the rain with the birds? Unclear.

This is also where Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds got married. Mike was like, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.

This tree is 600 years old. See? I can’t stop talking about trees.

Or the heat. The heat on this day was so intense that my jewelry absorbed it and began to burn my skin. I thought something was stinging me and then realized my ring, necklace, and bracelet were all burning my flesh. Surely this justified continuing to talk about the weather.

The heat is its own teacher. I can try to describe the horrors of slavery to my children all I want, or I can plop them down in South Carolina in July where they can barely tolerate the heat while taking a tractor tour of a plantation (i.e. not even walking), and suddenly the thought of backbreaking 12-hour labor in that same heat takes on new meaning.

The next day, this reality hit them square in the eyes when we toured the cabins of former enslaved people at the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens.

Our incredible guide told us that the last occupants of these cabins vacated in 1992. Mike and I looked at each other. Did he say 1992? He said those workers obviously weren’t enslaved but were employed to work on the gardens and grounds, and chose to live there as well. Some of them were members of a family that had worked in the gardens for more than 100 years. Nobody could speak. These were shacks, nothing more, and the thought of anyone occupying them as recently as 1992 was deeply disturbing.

The owners and operators of the plantation are the 11th generation of the Drayton family who originally built the plantation in 1670. A lady timidly raised her hand.

“Doooooo we like the Draytons? What are they like?”

The guide replied, “Well, of course their ancestors were evil, but they’re okay today. They let me share all I want about the slave history here. But they only started making the slave cabins part of the tour in 2010. So….” he trailed off. “You may wonder why a black man would want to work here giving these tours. But this is my work, traveling the country and drawing attention to former slave quarters. I actually have been to dozens of states and asked permission to sleep in standing slave cabins.”

Mike raised his hand. “Did you write a book about that?”

“Did I plant you here?” he joked. “Yes, I did. It’s called Sleeping with the Ancestors.” Several of us took out our phones to order it.

The gardens were spectacular, if you could overlook the terrifying presence of alligators. One popped up as we circled a pond and I could not cope. The kids teased me, “it’s just a baby one!” and I was like killers are killers, don’t get it twisted.

There’s one place alligators can’t drag you beneath the surface and drown you, and that’s on a boat. So across the harbor we went for an escape from the heat and a view of that perfect Arthur Ravenel Jr Bridge.

When we landed in downtown Charleston, we walked down the Battery to White Point Garden park, and the heat was so intense we couldn’t really go on. We found an ice cream truck and the kids inhaled cones while I stared at the trees.

It would be fair to say this looks staged, but he didn’t even know I’d gotten out my phone. This was a genuine moment of fathering hard; foot parking stroller, holding cone, cup and spoon to mitigate who gets the next bite.

The next day we left Charleston and headed for the beach.

We spent our second week on Kiawah Island for a change of pace and scenery. Kiawah is so interesting because apart from some private homes, the entire ten-mile-long island is a resort. This means that the unit we rented was a little less than a mile from the pool, restaurants, snack shacks, and other amenities. This might sound irritating but instead it sets you up for a beachy lifestyle that’s just groovy.

Mike rented bikes (Claire in a trailer behind him) and we got ready for the day and then biked a mile on a broad paved path through the resort to the fun. We could take a number of paths to the beach, and choose between a couple of pools. If you’re a parent with any experience of putting kids in the car to go everywhere on vacation, you feel my vibes on this. This was infinitely preferable.

“Kids! Get in! Buckle up! It doesn’t matter which seat! No, you don’t need a snack.” Versus “Hop on your bike and do some laps while I snap Claire in.” Zero pushback.

It was lush and warm, like biking through a jungle. The alligator warning signs added to the effect.

The major excitement of this week was Nana and Papa Reph joined us, and we were giddy to explore this new place together.

A few things happened when we got to the beach for the first time.

1. The kids took off their shoes when we reached the sand. Hunter took one step, paused, and looked back at me — “Why is the sand so soft, Mom?” My dear, sweet PNW child. These are not the coarse shores of your homeland.
2. Mike waded into the ocean, paused, and turned back to me — “How is this water 80 degrees?! This is warmer than Maui!” I had completely forgotten he’d never been on the Eastern Seaboard. He’s a San Diego/Seattle/Hawaii/Cabo man.
3. We all marveled that the waves were so calm, the ocean floor didn’t drop off into an abyss, and the distance from the beach grasses to the water was a football field as flat as a pancake.

I have to admit, however, that my favorite part was the pool situation. Whoever designed this knew how miserable it can be to parent near a pool. They brilliantly made half of the pool a foot deep with two dozen apparatus to entertain the children so we could actually sit on a chaise lounge for longer than 30 seconds.

Those huge water slides in the background kept the older kids and adults entertained. Happiness, we have arrived. Who wants to order lunch?

But don’t get comfortable everybody because Mama is hauling you all to Savannah tomorrow!

As promised, at 6:30am we pulled up in front of Nana and Papa’s condo and took off for the glories of Georgia.

Where I was told there’d be trees.

We rode a hop-on-hop-off trolley so we could cover as much of the city as possible in our day trip.

The heat (see?! There it is again!) was in the high nineties with humidity like the surface of the sun. Walking all over? What? Are we dropping weight before a wrestling match? Forget it. Trolley forever.

Savannah is so romantic and beautiful; the architecture, the Spanish moss (which, it turns out, is neither Spanish nor moss), the food, the incredible town squares (one of which is the location of Forrest Gump’s famous bench scenes), and… it’s just quiet. Much like Charleston, it’s been protected and preserved and avoided overdevelopment, at least in the historic district, so you can walk (trolley…) square to square and feel such peace even in the middle of town.

Iced lattes add to the peace.

Every time the kids ordered decaf lattes, the waitresses would look up at me, and I would just shrug. We’re from Seattle.

We visited the art museum and toured the Owens-Thomas House & Slave Quarters. You could be in Savannah for weeks and not cover all the historic homes; picking just one felt unfair. But considering we’d also toured the Nathaniel Russell House in Charleston, I didn’t want to push my luck with the kids.

One of the sweetest parts of the day was savoring it with Nana and Papa. Mike and I are more and more aware of the preciousness of time away with our parents and our kids at the same time.

I sent the photo below from one of the town squares to my friend Siri and said, “Bury me in Savannah” having no idea there was an actual song called Bury Me in Georgia.

While we’re in tranquility touring towns, photos popped up of our son freshly decked in tribal paint.

When the picture below appeared, we exclaimed, WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING!?

The camp has 100-year-old traditions like this one, called Council Ring, of teaching young boys about leadership, growth in being young men of Christ, responsibility, valor, etc. They receive recognition for challenges and victories accomplished that week and are spurred on to the week ahead.

Or, as my friend Heather said when I sent this to her, “It’s Lord of the Flies.”

Arden had a similar tradition, but much sweeter – a little candle in a chapel, rather than a 15-foot bonfire.

In a first for us, we decided to give our younger three a taste of camp at the resort. A taste of camp, a break for us, whatever you want to call it.

At 8am we left the condo and biked the mile to the camp check-in spot. The camp counselor asked, “Did you want to add lunch and pick them up an hour later?”

“What’s that cost?”

“Ten dollars.”

“Is this even a question? Kids, we’ll see you at 1:15.”

So for three glorious mornings we dropped the kids off, worked out in the gym, biked to the Sanctuary for coffee, read the paper, and spent the morning by the pool. Mike had big dreams of things we could do during those precious hours, but as soon as the counselor said the kids would be swimming, I couldn’t budge. The counselors were maybe 18 and all laid-back Southern with matching casual attitudes.

It’s probably less vigilance than stalking if the ones being watched aren’t aware they’re being watched. I didn’t let that stop me.

Age is everything. I’m pushing myself by letting my ten-year-old be poolside completely apart from me:

…while I stalk my 3.5-year-old as she “attends camp.”

I thought the snappy clothes would primarily be for Charleston, but we had to keep up the game on Kiawah, at least at dinner. After showering off the day at the pool, Jameson would always roll his eyes when I’d reach for the madras shorts and polo, but Hunter just shrugged.

“We’re dressing like golfers. I get it.”

They’re like tiny, hungry Scottie Schefflers headed to the clubhouse.

I got some pushback on the boat shoes, but no matter where you eat on the island it pretty much looks like this. You’re either on a golf course or near one, so the Crocs just weren’t gonna fly.

While we were following The Official Preppy Handbook, Henry was packing his sleeping bag to head into the wooded hills to build a (little) fire and sleep under the stars.

For the boys back at Kiawah, Mike made special father-son memories by taking them to see the sunrise each day. They invited me, but – shocker! – I passed until the final day.

Sweet sleepy morning faces.

At last, we hit the road to Asheville to pick up the twins. We were itching to see them, to ask them every question their letters (letter, in Henry’s case) didn’t answer. I couldn’t wait to squeeze them until they begged me to stop. In Arden’s case, she actually did, because I started to cry from joy since we picked her up first.

Mainly, they wanted to hug each other.

And they both just wanted Claire. Who wanted them just as much.

Did we head back to a hotel to rest and nap and let the twins recover? Of course not! I come from the hearty Berger/McMurtry line of pushers! We do!

So off to the Biltmore we went! It’s in Asheville, afterall!

My parents brought me to Biltmore when I was 12, and for me 90% of the weight was that it was Richie Rich’s house. What can I say? It was his Home Alone era. He was kind of a big deal.

But I didn’t want the kids having only Macaulay Culkin in their heads. So before we left Seattle, like the schoolmarm I am, I made the twins write essays on George Washington Vanderbilt and the country estate he built, still the largest house in America at 179,000 square feet of Gilded Age majesty.

I didn’t excuse myself from the work either and read a book about how – how on earth – the house is still privately owned and run by the fourth generation of descendants of the Vanderbilts, rather than a foundation, government or preservation society. And it’s immensely popular and profitable, not a crumbling mess. It’s a pretty remarkable achievement.

Not impressive to all, however. As our little trolley rounded the corner from the parking lot to the grand esplanade (shown above), giving all of us the first breathtaking view of the estate, the teenage girls sitting opposite me said, “Honestly, I thought it’d be bigger.” “Yeah, me too.”

Sigh.

Once inside, they handed us audio guides, and even had ones for the kids narrated by “Cedric the St. Bernard,” since the Vanderbilts always owned that breed.

And it worked — the kids glued them to their ears and gaped at every room.

Cedric even kept Claire focused.

Nobody could get over the indoor pool.

After all that learning, Henry treated everyone to the Biltmore Creamery in the courtyard.

The kids are already talking about next year at camp, and registration opens next week, so I better get my ducks in a row. This time, Hunter wants in. Who can blame him? Look at all those brothers.

Arden and her nine cabinmates text each other every single day on their mothers’ phones, jumping on multi-person Facetimes, which I didn’t even know was possible. They Marco Polo regularly. They wish more methods of communication would be invented so they could use them, too.

On the other hand, when we picked Henry up the final morning of camp, he threw up deuces and was out of there, and only in the last month has said, “Hey Mom, can you email my friends’ moms so I can write to them?” During camp, Arden mailed letters to every person she could possibly think of, including seven or eight letters to her dear old mom and dad. Henry sent two letters his entire time at camp — one to us, one to a friend back home. Boys and girls, man. We’ve been laughing over their inherent differences since they were infants, and it’s so amusing to watch it continue.

Several people have given us a worried side-eye after we returned, wondering if this vacation was really just a scouting trip for a permanent move. I’ll close with an anecdote to answer that question.

Around 9:30 one night in Charleston, I was on the couch watching a show while Mike did some work on his laptop in the kitchen. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him rise slowly from his chair, stand stock still, and grab a magazine. He lifted it high in the air and then WHAP, slammed it down on the kitchen counter.

“This is the largest insect I have ever seen. Do not come over here.” Easiest request ever heeded.

Right then I flashed back to the day before, when I was telling my parents over the phone that Charleston was paradise. Having been there themselves, they replied, “Mmm-hmm. Seen a Palmetto bug yet?”

“What’s a Palmetto bug?” I asked naively.

“You’ll see,” they said.

Mike yelled, “It’s not dead! Its head is still moving independent of its body!”

I thought I’d been spared, but the next morning at the Sanctuary, I saw one crawling across the lobby floor. Thinking myself a hero, I alerted the lady at the front desk.

“Oh, you mean our state bird?” she smiled. Tough gal thinks she’s funny. She left it there, in a five-star hotel.

It’s funny how hard it is to fall asleep when you know a cockroach the size of a housecat could crawl across your bed at any moment.

So…no, thank you, we will be staying put in what I told another guest in that lobby was “my bugless home.”

“Where, may I ask, is that?” he said.

Seattle, I smiled. Seattle is home.