I agreed to go camping over Memorial Day Weekend in October, which was an optimistic time when I had not, for example, been diagnosed with cancer. That I am Not A Camper is something that I knew about myself and my husband knew about be, and yet October Jean was a woman who was willing to challenge herself in the interest of people she loves.
Various life events happened and I became May Jean, but that campsite reservation still existed and could it be that bad? Could I still be an optimistic person? And could I think of an activity that my children, who do often need to be reminded to keep their shoes on while outdoors, would enjoy more? I agreed to persevere, reached out to friends with outdoorsy inclinations to borrow the equipment.
My parents took us hiking, but not camping. It wasn’t their vibe. That was fine with me. We were intellectual! I did the couple of requisite school or scout trips, but never had to pitch a tent. When I was 25 or so and living in London, some friends from college were spending a summer living in a tent at a beachside campground in Spain, so I went to visit them for a few days, and I was a pain in the ass.
Years later I mentioned to one of the friends who’d been with us that I would be camping again at a music festival and she looked alarmed, on behalf of my companions. Fair. At the festival, I didn’t pitch my own tent but relied instead on a friend’s skills. I retired to bed early and irritable, and was woken a short time thereafter by people singing ‘Hey Jude’ on an endless loop for what seemed like hours. No one knows when that song ends at the best of times, and especially not when high on ketamine. I swore I’d never camp again. But I didn’t know what it was like to have children.
This weekend: I gave it my best shot, I really did, but my gosh when I awoke the first morning I was in the grumpiest mood, even with B informing me that he had slept all night in his Spider-Man sleeping bag ‘like a clam.’ His prodigious literary flourish was not sufficient to overcome my feeling that we’d had a choice, as a family, between sleeping in our perfectly nice home or sleeping in a tent, and we’d made the wrong one.
Everyone else in the family disagreed. They loved the tent. Making sure that other people are having a good time has been a burden I’ve carried throughout my lifetime for good and ill (just ask my therapist), so I felt quite troubled by the realization that I was the weak emotional link in this situation. Cheer up, Jean, I thought to myself, but someone that encouraging self-talk was not enough to convince me that doing the hard and loving work of parenting on a campsite added unnecessary burdens to the daily challenges of the hard and loving work of parenting. I’ve often said that one of the benefits of travel is the experience of mild discomfort that makes you appreciate home, but this was taking it too far.
Were my children blissful in their wild enjoyment of the great outdoors? Yes. Did the pleasure of witnessing this outweigh my discomfort at having to walk 300 meters up a steep gravel path in order to visit the communal toilet? Mm. I tried, I really did.
When people talk about ‘core memories’ I think they mean experiences like this, out-of-the-ordinary moments when the world feels big and fresh and kind, but I fear that my children will in future reminisce about the great camping trip we went on with our friends when they had a great time but Mommy was a real pain in the ass. But if they ask, I’ll tell them that it was an occasion when I modelled resilience, in the face of being unable to overcome my most authentic self.
JHE