Dear Camp Photographer,
I know we had a complicated relationship last summer when Emmet was at sleep-away camp for three and a half weeks. I spent hours scouring the camp photo website, refreshing and refreshing. I searched for any sign of my child: a piece of his ear, a corner of his T-shirt, a recognizable shoe. And then, when there were photos of his whole, actual face and body, I wondered why he was standing two feet behind a happy-looking group of kids or why he was wearing long pants and long sleeves on a 90-degree day or why he was smiling ear-to-ear as his head popped out of a metal garbage can. I implored you to take more photographs of my boy (ok, never directly to you, but isn’t telepathy in your job description?)
Anyway, I’m here to make amends. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you planned to put my overdressed little boy in scores of photos this summer. And if you weren’t, we had a plan for that too: I may or may not have offered him $1 for every photo in which I could actually discern his face, and since he is saving up for more Nintendo Switch games, I was expecting scads. Furthermore, he had signed up for photography as an elective because he realized the power of being behind the camera. (Everyone loves the camp photographer, right?)
But, as Steinbeck warned, the best laid plans of mice and men—and moms—sometimes go awry.
Yup, the plan was for me to see lots more of Emmet this summer. But not in the way it unfolded. You see, Emmet was recently diagnosed with a bone marrow disease that will keep him away from his summer home this year. If you were taking pictures of him this summer, you’d see a lot of bruises and little red dots called petechiae all over his body. Sometimes, now, when I look at the pictures from last summer, I wonder what was brewing inside his body as he played four square or sailed on Lake Potanipo. Were his platelets already dwindling? Was his bone marrow already sleeping on the job, causing his red and white blood cell production to subside?
So this summer, instead of sailing and four square, Emmet will be home with his dad and me. There will be a field trip to the hospital for a few days, where he will undergo immunosuppressive therapy treatment that will basically suppress his immune system and hopefully, reboot it. After that, “Camp Home” will commence. Electives will include playing badminton in our yard, reading books together, and way more video games than there ought to be. Rest hour will be extended, and evening activities will consist of barbecues, watching movies, and playing Exploding Cats and other oddly named board games. There won’t be any color war but there will be lots of hugs and ice cream and probably eye-rolling at my attempt to be “counselor Mom.”
And, dear camp photographer, next summer I hope to be cursing you once again—from behind my computer screen, of course—for not having enough pictures of my kid.
Fondly,
Lisa M.
