Missing out

In the end, Tim missed the whole three-day sixth grade Outdoor Education trip. Each of the three mornings, he woke with a fever; each morning we said “Maybe tomorrow you can go.” We had plans and back-up plans and extra options for how to get him there. The first day, we said “You’ll only miss the introductions!” The second day, we said “You’ll still fit in one full day!” We told him no one would remember later on exactly which activities he was and was not present for, as long as he was there for some part of it.

But in the end, he wasn’t. He couldn’t rid himself of the fever that was keeping him listless and pale, so he stayed behind the whole time and thought about all his classmates up at camp in New Hampshire.

On Wednesday he asked to go over to my parents’ house for a little bit, thinking their company would cheer him up. When we arrived, my mother reminisced about an experience when she was a girl that I hadn’t heard before. She and her elder sister had rehearsed a tumbling act together for weeks; apparently the grand finale involved my mother being lifted high in the air (or possibly standing atop her sister and somehow elevating herself that way). She woke the morning of the gymnastics show with a fever and wasn’t allowed to go. “If I’d done the show, I probably wouldn’t remember it,” Mom said on Wednesday. “It’s memorable only because I was so disappointed I didn’t get to do it.”

That made me think about events that are memorable for having been missed. When I was about Holly’s age, a friend was having a birthday party; according to the invitation, there would be elephant rides, though looking back it’s very hard for me to imagine how this was going to happen in Carlisle, but I suppose it’s possible. I developed a high fever that day and had to miss the party; I thought about elephant rides for months after that. And as my parents both told Tim about while we were at their house, it was almost a certainty during my childhood that whenever the family took an airline trip together, at least one of us kids if not more would be sick sometime during our travels and have to miss out on some of the fun, lying in a hotel room bed instead. I can remember sore throats in destinations from Orlando to Palo Alto to San Francisco. Apparently we were extremely susceptible to airport germs.

Tim’s classmates all returned from the outdoor education trip last night. Yesterday I took Tim to the pediatrician, who said he should stay home today since he was still running a fever. I know Tim is bored and misses his friends, but I’m actually not sorry he won’t be at school today; all the other kids will be talking about the trip. By Monday, when Tim is likely to be all recovered, it won’t be such a hot topic anymore.

Of course, at eighth grade graduation two years from now, Tim will be missing from a lot of the images in the customary slide show. No ropes course for him; no campfire skits; no peering-out-of-the-cabin photos with the other guys. It’s a lesson all of us learn at some point: how to weather the disappointment of being sidelined when everyone else is off doing something great.

He’s okay with it, though. His group of friends had already planned an afternoon ice cream excursion for next week, and there’s a school dance the week after that. He’ll get back into the swing of things. And someday, like my mother with her tumbling show, he’ll be okay with remembering the outdoor education trip specifically for the fact that he missed it.

Sixth grade outdoor education

Way back in the spring of Tim’s fifth grade year, a full eleven months ago, we first heard talk of the sixth grade outdoor education program: three days and two nights at a nature camp in New Hampshire. “We did that when I was in sixth grade!” I thought to myself. And I think I had fun. I definitely remember learning one critical life-lesson on that trip, though it wasn’t anything the camp intended to teach me. While we unloaded our duffels from the bus in a fire-bucket line, one of my friends was getting on my nerves and I was deliberately rude to her. That night, she rolled out of a top bunk and nearly broke a vertebra; the injury caused her to be sent home from nature camp in the morning, and I felt guilty for the rest of the week. It was my first inkling that one reason not to be rude to someone is that if something bad happens to them, you’ll regret the unnecessary unpleasantness you caused.

But last spring, the sixth grade Outdoor Education trip merited only a brief mention in a parent presentation about middle school curriculum, though I did wonder at the time how what I remembered as a weeklong trip had shrunk down to a mere two nights. But when we received our official instruction sheet a few weeks ago, I realized that the prescribed student drop-off time of 6:45 a.m. on Tuesday and pick-up time of 7:45 p.m. on Thursday meant they still managed to carve out three full days of outdoor learning while taking away some of the pressure that overnights with one hundred preadolescents inevitably invokes – even if not a single one of them tumbles from a top bunk like my friend Jennifer did.

I didn’t give much further thought to Tim’s Outdoor Ed trip until last month, when we were invited to a presentation by the camp director. After listening to the agenda for the three days – nature walks, outdoor exploration, group meals, skits – I was left with a feeling of pure envy. I wanted to be in sixth grade again! At least that one week. Three days at a camp in the woods with all my friends. Was there any chance Tim and I could pull a Freaky Friday so I could be him for those few days?

I don’t think so, and I’m not sure he’d agree to that anyway. Unlike many of his friends, he’s never been to sleepaway camp, but I’ve convinced him this is the perfect way to get a taste for what that would be like: all the fun of camp but all the familiarity of the classmates he sees every day and, in many cases, has known for six years. I’m excited to find out how he likes the experience.

Except now that it’s departure day, I’m anxious. The questions the other parents asked at the March presentation seemed insignificant to me: Does the camp nurse understand asthma treatments? What kind of protein is available for vegetarians? Are the kids allowed to read after lights-out? But maybe I suppressed my own anxieties until now. Will he be okay? Sure, it’s only three days – and, more importantly, only two nights – but will he miss home? Will he feel comfortable with his friends in such ceaseless proximity? Will he take any showers at all in those three days?

Soon enough, I’ll know. He leaves for New Hampshire today; he’ll be back on Thursday night. In the meantime, all I can do is wonder how he’s doing, hope he’s okay, and learn to weather this mild sense of anxiety. Which makes sending a kid off to Sixth Grade Outdoor Education a pretty good overall metaphor for parenting. I’m learning, one step at a time.