Cousins Camp

It sounded like so much fun, that I tucked the idea away in the back of my head. While raising kids, I’d read a magazine article about grandparents who held a Cousins Camp for their grandkids, while their kids skedaddled off to parts unknown.

I’ve lived through twenty years and two knee replacements since my misty-eyed Cousins Camp vision. But what sounded like “why not?” when I was 45, sounds more like a heckuva lotta work now. I like having my kids-as-parents to fall back on for the daily things, like brushing their kids’ teeth and potty training. I like saying goodbye to our grandboys when it’s time to take them home. I like sleeping in my own bed without bumping into buddies.

So Cousins Camp hasn’t popped up on my radar in the eleven years since Baby Oak first made me “Ma’am.” Not even once. But this year it did, and here’s why: we had the offer of a free house in the North Carolina mountains. Suddenly, the biggest hurdle–finding the right spot—fell away and all that was left on the downside was potentially missing a little sleep.

And the upside? I wasn’t sure, but I wanted to find out.

I pitched it to the parents who all agreed. The grands were overjoyed. The idea included meeting up with daughter Sadie and her boys, who live in nearby Black Mountain, so all eight cousins would be together. She and I came up with a plan, and I drew a map of it and mailed it to each boy.

And just like that, Cousins Camp was born.

When I was a camp counselor way back when, I learned that boys don’t want to bother changing clothes, especially at camp. One summer, one of the boy campers took home a perfectly packed suitcase of perfectly clean clothes, because he’d worn the same perfectly wretched ones all week.

I figured boys haven’t changed much since then, so I intended to let my grandboys wear the same thing as many days as they liked. It was easier for everybody, including myself. The boy who didn’t change clothes for 7 days survived, and so would we.

So I sent a packing list to their mamas:  “…not many clothes or PJ’s…” it read, along with the essentials, like water bottles and buddies to sleep with.  There was hardly room for our six local boys in my car as it was.

The day finally came last week, and we were off. I’d placed a Walmart order the night before that Sadie would pick up, while Baby Abie napped. I packed a lunch and treats, gathered games. What with drawing monsters and maps and passing notes, the boys were content with a ream of paper and markers until the very last hour.

It was Hawk, age 6, who broke the spell, “Ma’am, how much longer?”

“About an hour, buddy.”

Three minutes later, “Ma’am.  How much longer now?”

“Still an hour.  Sorry.”

A whole two minutes, and then, “Ma’am?…”

We listened to “Greeking Out” by National Geo Kids until we lost our connection in the mountains, so I told stories of their dads at their ages and of my grandparents at mine.

For lunch, we stopped at a roadside picnic table on the edge of Lake Ocoee. It wasn’t idyllic, but the boys were hungry. We were sitting on concrete benches in the hot sun rather than in the shade as I’d wanted, and once we sat down, I realized there was a sharp drop off to the water. I feared I’d lose a boy before we ever got started.

“Let’s finish our ham-n-cheeses in the car!” I suggested, overly cheery and desperate, hoping to distract them from the ravine that plunged right next to them. When wrangling boys on a road trip by yourself, you don’t mind messing up your car in lieu of explaining something worse to parents.

I allowed things at Cousins Camp I wouldn’t have approved of as a mother: I baited them with candy to “at least try” at the gas station. I let them wrestle and run in the house when we got there. They had ice cream plus candy two days running. They played with their flashlights after lights out. I never said to get quiet. And I didn’t demand a finished hotdog before we made S’mores at Monkey Bottom.

Where do you go after you’ve been to a place called Monkey Bottom? For the next two days, we hit Montreat Park and Flat Creek and did the paddle boats on Lake Susan. We saw a big, black bear on the way to Craggy Gardens, where we hiked to wildflower flats and climbed the trees there. We played at the splash pad, stopped to shop at Town Hardware, got ice cream and then crashed and missed inflatables on the square.

After supper, I read stories I’d written about a black bear in the woods who watched over us. Older boys made up their own stories after that. We thanked God out loud for our family and being together and the house that a real-life mama-bear watching over us had provided. (Thank you, Gigi!)

I rubbed little boy feet at 2:30 am because Hawkie had cramps and couldn’t sleep. The next night, Bain got lonely when others buddied up, so I sort-of-slept with his feet in my ribs. The last night, Ezra wanted a change of scene and climbed into bed with me. He needed words to resolve a problem with favorite cousin Roan, words he let me speak into him. It was sacred ground, and I got to walk there. I had 9 hours total of shut-eye at Cousins Camp, I think.

I began fraying around the edges. When Bain didn’t want to wear the long sleeve shirt I’d brought for hiking Craggy, I felt tempted to use it to strangle him to make sure he took it. Step back, I told myself. Don’t lose it. If he gets cold, he’ll learn. I put it in my backpack, and later, he asked for it.

Unnaturally tidy, the mess began getting to me. “Let’s pick up!” I hollered when we got back to the house, and everybody scrambled. Rafe and Ransom, both age 3, helped best.

Ezra was picking up his clothes—the downside of having more than one thing to wear—when I tossed him a shirt that smacked him square in the face. “Hey, I don’t like that!” he complained. With his dirty shoes on the counter next to the ground beef, all I cared about was what I didn’t like myself.

“I didn’t like what you did, Ma’am,” he repeated.

Oh come on, I thought. It was just a shirt. It didn’t hurt. You’re 7, for goodness sake. But what I said was, “Well, I don’t like your dirty shoes on the counter by our burgers,” which of course, got us nowhere.

After supper, Ez sat at the end of the sofa farthest away from me, not close as he had been. He didn’t tell a story like he did the night before. He was quiet getting to bed, which wasn’t like him.

I could explain that he misunderstood me: I didn’t mean to hit his face, and I wasn’t trying to hurt him. But his heart would still feel heavy. Unacknowledged, he’d have to pack it up and carry it by himself. The slight would linger between us like a smell you can’t get rid of.

Would I care about how he felt? Did I care? I had to think a minute. I had to ask God for help. And suddenly, the love was right there.

“I’m sorry I hurt your feelings before supper with that shirt. I care about how you feel, Ezzy. It must’ve felt crummy–like I don’t care at all.”

“That’s OK, Ma’am. I forgive you.”

And just like that, the sun came out. He visibly brightened. He asked if we could snuggle.

And I realized that this was the upside I’d come for. This was what Cousins Camp was really about. It wasn’t mainly about having fun, though we were having plenty. It wasn’t about tasting freedom, though we’d bent some rules and stomped ’em. It wasn’t really about the stories we were telling or the memories we were making, either.

It was about doing life together–messing up and forgiving. It was caring how the other person felt and not just myself. It was loving when I didn’t want to.

The last day, Sadie asked, “what would you do if you could do what you love best?”

“This,” I said.

I can’t think of anything better.