Saturday morning. The plan was for me to drive my 12-year-old daughter and a camp friend—a boy named Taylor—to a bat mitzvah in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where they would spend the night at the bat mitzvah girl’s house along with other camp friends. The problem was that my 9-year-old son needed to come along because I had errands to run with him afterward—a prospect that mortified my daughter. We were a house divided: My wife thought Elena was overreacting; I was more sympathetic, knowing how relentlessly annoying Adam can be when he puts his heart into it. What to do?
At her age, Elena’s desire for more privacy is only natural—and it’s also regularly thwarted because she still shares a room with Adam. If all goes well, we’re going to have an expanded apartment with bedrooms for both of them but that’s not likely to happen for at least another ten months, if not longer, so one way she often deals with it is to minimize direct conversation with him, at least when they’re in the room. Sadly (to me at least), they almost never say goodnight to each other.
Enter sleepaway camp.
Sleepaway camp has been Elena’s great escape since the summer after third grade. This summer, however, Adam will be trying out sleepaway camp for the first time, spending one session (about three and a half weeks) at the same camp as Elena. So in wanting to join us on our ride to Connecticut, Adam had a genuine interest in speaking to another boy, an older boy, about the camp. Which my wife thought was a great idea. But Elena had a genuine interest in catching up with a popular and pleasant boy without having her younger brother interceding.
In the end, Adam was allowed to come on the ride as long as he promised to try to keep to himself and respect Elena’s time with her friend. And, of course, for the first ten minutes he didn’t do that at all. Butting into every part of their conversation, he even announced that he was going to Crane Lake to “hang out with Taylor, not Elena.” Thanks, Adam.
The good news about 9-year-olds is that, unlike 3-year-olds, they can (to a degree) adjust course even if they’re not quite getting what they want. The car trip could have gone way downhill from there, but surprisingly we all held it together. I reminded Adam of his promises and he became less intrusive—or was it that he was just bored by Elena and Taylor’s catch-up chatter?
As for myself, I loved being in earshot of my daughter and a boy, as it will probably never happen again! I must say, in the tradition of many women I’ve known, Elena had a certain self-deprecating and humorous charm and enthusiasm that filled in a lot of the gaps in conversation.
Still, by the time we arrived at the temple in Bridgeport, Elena and Taylor seemed keen on saying goodbye to us as quickly as possible and getting on with their respective tribes of girls and boys.
Eric Messinger is Editor of New York Family. He can be reached at [email protected]
