Visiting Day: Take 13, Part 1
Visiting Day Weekend — 2018. For those of you not familiar with visiting day, it is the day when you get to drive up to camp to visit your children, who have been in camp only for two or three weeks. Some of them come home a week after you visit them, and most of them cry when you leave on visiting day. Last year I was very sad because I did not have a visiting day to go to. Son #1 was working and sons #2 and 3 were in Israel. This was all very nice, but it deprived me of one of my favorite days of the year.
I think back to when my boys were little and we had to attach a U-Haul to the minivan in order to transport the bottles of water and powerade (only blue) and the packages of cookies and a variety of candy and other unhealthy snacks, because even though camp is a fortune, they don’t supply food. I am kidding, of course they supply food. But how do you say no to a letter where every word is spelled wrong, but it asks for all sorts of things and is signed “I love you sooooo much.” You cannot say no to that.
So you shop for a week before so you have everything that your little angel has asked for.
But for me, the fun part of the day always has been the fashion. Now, for any of you who know me, you know that I am the antithesis of fashion, but that doesn’t mean that I cannot appreciate it on someone else. For example, one year, the weather called for rain. Lots and lots of rain. But that didn’t stop some of these moms from wearing teeny white shorts with high heeled booties — and not the waterproof kind. Ahh, the joy I got watching these booties get stuck in the mud and the shorts covered with splashes of said mud. It was delightful! Those were good times.
No one should be wearing high heels on visiting day. Not even if you look really good in them. But I still looked forward to it. Well, this year, I was all ready to get some good fodder for the column. Some “who wore it best” and all. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed. No one was dressed inappropriately! In fact, everyone looked pretty much like me, dressing for comfort, not for style. Hmm. Maybe I started a trend?
Not a chance.
And the other thing I love about visiting day is seeing all of the skinny chicks from your youth not be so skinny anymore. That always makes me feel a little bit better about myself. I can be honest about that. Everyone is fighting a battle that no one else knows about and if it manifests in a few extra pounds, then so be it. I just hope they are healthy and when they are ready, those gosh darn pounds will come right off!
Back to the children. This year, as I have written before, all of my boys have transformed to responsible working men. Son #2, aka Division Head, walked around all day introducing himself to parents and discussing their kids with them. It was so beautiful to watch, I was shepping major nachas from this one. So happy that I had decided not to leave him at the mall that one day all of those years ago. (Just kidding!) And Son #3, my adorable counselor, was hanging out with his kids and their parents and talking about how well they are all doing. It was really nice to see, and it was even nicer to stand in front of son #3’s fan, because it was so freakin hot — not good weather for a 47-year-old mom going through the “changes.”
So the day was really great, being with my boys and husband #1. It was really nice. And totally worth the traffic. But wait, there was very little traffic coming home. Why? Because Jeeves, my Waze butler, likes to take me in a circuitous route, so I think that I am really getting somewhere because I am not getting stuck in traffic, but all it is doing is keeping me moving so I think I am actually going somewhere. Eventually, you do end up where you are going, but it is never the straightest way to do it and that is OK.
So my 13th (approximately) visiting day has come to an end, and I hope it was as enjoyable for all of you as it was for me. This column is actually going to be a two-part series because I need to write about what happened over Shabbos before visiting day and the lovely bungalow colony that we stayed in. That deserves its very own column. So see you next week!
Banji Ganchrow of Teaneck was very well behaved and tried to be nice to everyone because it is the nine days after all…
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