Sometimes we make decisions and we absolutely know with confidence that
they are the right ones. That we are making the best choice we can. More often
than not though, we decide to do something and then hope for the best. Many
things in life are a shot in the dark.
That is what we felt about our decision
to send our oldest to sleep away camp. For more than a year everyone and their
brother had been trying to convince us to do it. They swore up and down that
this camp was Disney World for kids with special needs and that it was the
absolute best thing we could do for him and for our family. With all that
encouragement we felt that we had to give it a try. And so on June 27th
I packed him up and sent him, accompanies by his father, to NY for 7 weeks. As
we drove to the airport with our child crying and saying he wasn’t going, we
looked at each other and said “one summer! We will try it but after this time
we will not force him to go again”.
Even with all the assurances that he would have a blast and all the
smiley, happy pictures that were being sent to us by his counselors and our
“spies” in camp, we were still not sure we made the right choice. My husband
and I fretted nightly. We worried that he was homesick; we felt that no one
could care for his as well as we could and that he would simply not enjoy it.
A few Sundays ago was visiting day. My husband and I left the 2 younger
kids with my in laws and headed to NY. We were so excited, literally jumping
out of our skin. We could not wait to see him. We battled a delayed flight, a
confused GPS and made it about an hour and a half late. As I walked into the
camp scanning for my boy, I suddenly heard out of the corner of my ear “hi
Mommy” and my heart melted. I have never had such an amazing hug in my entire
life. We laughed, we cried and smiled ear to ear.
From the moment we got there he had a huge grin on his face. We met all
of his friends, we were stopped by countless staff members saying to us “Are
you YoYo’s mom and dad? I love him, he is amazing, he is my favorite”. Our son
took us from place to place showing us what he does all day and simply being
together and having fun. It was a perfect day.
About an hour into our visit my husband looked at me and said “it is
such a weight off”. It really was. As I said, it seemed like he was having fun
but until we saw it with our own eyes we couldn’t be sure. We couldn’t know how
right our decision was. That sending our son to a place where being different
is the norm was exactly right. That we were sending him in to the arms of an 18
year boy who is so incredible and so loves our child and with whom he has
probably formed what will be a lasting and wonderful friendship. That he would
make real friends, his own age! That we would three days later receive two separate
pictures of him smiling with his arm around his bunkmates. That this would
truly be even better than Disney Land. It is better because at Camp Hasc
everyone is like him where as at Disney Land, no one is.
There was one thing though, that everyone got wrong. Everyone talked
about how important this was for our other children and about how we needed a
break. No one told me how desperately we would miss him, how I would feel like
my right arm was missing. That my other children would ask for him daily. That
getting that good shabbos call each Friday would become what I would wait for
each week. That visiting day would be the happiest day of my entire summer.
And so I have learned something incredibly valuable. I have learned that
I do not need a “break” from him and that sending him away was not for me. I
have learned that sending him to camp was entirely for him. That giving him
this experience was absolutely the right thing to do for him because he
deserves to be somewhere where everyone thinks he is a rockstar, where no
matter what he does he is perfect in their eyes. Where kids much younger than
me choose to spend their summer caring for and loving for kids like mine. I am
blown away by this camp and by the people who work there. I wish I could say
that I would have been one of those kids who volunteer to work at camp Hasc.
But I am honest enough to say that I wouldn’t have been.
