Sam Shipherd lives in Albany, N.Y. with her family, which includes an old dog and a demanding cat. She works in the non-profit sector and in her free time she enjoys reading, traveling, and writing about traveling.
Lost
By Sam Shipherd
The summer of 2012 was my first summer as a working mom. Our two children were ages 7 and 11 and, for the first time, they could attend the same summer camp. A friend suggested a day camp her kids would be attending. It seemed ideal: on a lake, not far from my new job, and our children would all know each other.
On the morning of the first day of camp, I packed up my kids. We all had that first-day, jittery excitement. Our oldest child was looking forward to something new, his younger sister was excited to be with her big brother, and I was happy our kids would have an experience I never had as a child.
Drop-off at camp was chaotic - there were yellow school buses discharging kids, and counselors with clipboards. I kissed my children goodbye and headed off to work.
About an hour later, my friend called, asking how the drop-off had gone.
“Great!” I said, and I asked how it went with her kids. She said they had been running late, as usual, and she was surprised she hadn’t seen my kids. This gave me pause, given the timeline. Then she told me she’d asked if my kids had checked in for camp yet and the camp staff told her no.
This made no sense. She was telling me about her check-in process, and I kept interrupting her. A building? I only saw buses. A table? There was no table, only clipboards.
Like in a horror movie, both slowly and all at once, I realized I had not gone to the right summer camp. I had dropped my children by a lake whose name I did not know. I left my babies in the woods with the first group of semi-responsible looking teenagers with the words ‘counselor’ printed on their tee shirts.
I was panic-stricken. Where were my children?!? I could not call anyone because I did not know the name of the place. I only knew where my children were supposed to be.
I left work and sped back to the lake. Out of desperation, I called the camp I had signed up for but, when you call your child’s summer camp, you are not ringing the lakeside lifeguard, you are calling a downtown office that handles registration.
Between choked sobs, I explained what I had done. The people at the camp office, like me, had never set foot at camp. Their silence asked the obvious question, What kind of mother does that?? I drove onward, the maternal guilt kicking in hard.
As I got closer to the lake, this time coming from the other direction, I could see the error of my ways. Earlier, I had missed the driveway to camp. Instead, I went to the town beach on the lake. My children were at the town's summer rec program.
I was thrilled to see my children, sitting safe and sound on the beach. They had been the first to figure it out and saw, next door, the way cooler camp where they were supposed to be.
I tried to laugh it off as an unplanned adventure, but the kids weren’t buying it. They went on to have many fun summers at that lake and I never again had to worry about finding a new summer camp. It turns out the only thing lost that day was my innocence as a working mom.