The truth about camping

Here’s the truth about camping. You spend days packing everything you will need to set up your household in the wilderness in any weather. You labor to pack it all up in what amounts to fitting an elephant into a dog’s cage. You slog away at setting the whole darned thing up in the wilderness. Then after two days, you do the whole thing again in reverse. I suspect this is why my sisters-in-law are not going camping this year.

Don’t get me wrong I love camping. There is nothing better than sitting by that campfire gazing at the stars. I love singing by the campfire. I love hiking. I even love s’mores.

It’s the preparation that is a chore. Partly because you’re trying to do something very difficult: make sure your family is fed, dry and safe during your camping trip. So you have to bring clothes for all sorts of weather. You have to pack pots and pans and food galore.

For those of us who cook every day, the prospect of cooking in the wilderness is – um – not the best part of camping. Let’s face it, if we could do without the cooking of macaroni and cheese over a camp stove, we would do it.

I’m not freaked out by the bugs or the dirt. I can deal with the lumpy air mattress and sleeping outdoors. Usually we’re so exhausted that I manage to sleep anyway. It’s the wet clothes and the whole food thing that’s difficult.

What I truly enjoy is spending time with my kids and my family. This year, it’s all my brothers and all the cousins together. This means that I’m camping with 11 boys and no girls but hey, you do what you can to bond.

In past years, my kids talk about the camping trip as the highlight of their summer. It doesn’t matter that we’ve spent weeks at the Shore or traveled to amusement parks or had trips to the city. It’s the camping that delights them.

Last year, we camped at Assateague Island in Virginia. It’s a beautiful place where horses roam free and where they are, in fact, so free that they broke into our tent and ruined the netting on our tent’s front door.

Nevertheless, as we sat together watching the stars and trying to do some singing without the benefit of a guitar, my son Will looked up at me and said, “This is the best day of my life.”

When you hear that, then you forget all about how hard it was to pack and what a pain it was to set up the tent and to schlep all that food in its pool of melting ice. You only remember that your children were supremely happy camping. And so were you.

Of course, just as the memories of how painful childbirth is come back when you're ready to give birth again, so too do you remember what a pain it is to get ready for camping when you're packing up again. But just like childbirth again, it's too late because you're already committed and there's no turning back. You just have to take it on faith that the memories you create this year will make it all worthwhile once again.

* * Illustration from Bing Images and yosemitevalleycampers.org

Lazy summers

When I was a child, summer was endless. We had a neighborhood of kids who played in each other's yards and came home at dinnertime, only to go out again when dinner was over until it was too dark to play.

We played in the sprinkler. We splashed in the kiddie pool. We rode bikes; we played dress-up, school and house. We played long games of Monopoly and elaborate games of hide and seek. It was a long time ago, long enough to make me feel like a dinosaur.

Most moms were home with the kids in those days and no one worried about children running around without much supervision.

That kind of summer seems nearly impossible today. Most moms are out working. Many of our friends' children will be in camp for most of the summer. There is no ``Our Gang'' of neighborhood kids. And the thought of my children running down the street with the cars speeding past gives me nightmares.

But I still want those summers for my children. I believe they are the stuff that dreams and memories are made of. I can still remember not knowing what day it was during the summer. I want my kids to have that.

But it's beginning to dawn on me that it takes a lot of work to create an idyllic summer. Now that I think about it, there's an unseen hand in the background of those golden memories. Who turned on the sprinkler and set up the kiddie pool? Who rounded up the clothes for dress-up and found the Monopoly game?

We were carefree. Mom was busy.

I have no doubt that working mothers are gritting their teeth by now. Camp is no longer a luxury but a necessity. But I still think you can enjoy carefree time at the end of the day and on weekends.

When children have the leisure to be able to play by themselves and to explore the outdoors, it enriches them in ways that no extra art or music classes or baseball camp could do, says William Crain, a professor of psychology at City College of New York and author of ``Reclaiming Childhood: Letting Children Be Children in Our Achievement-Oriented Society,'' (Times Books, 2003).

``They discover things and they create things, they'll make up games, they'll fantasize, they'll do a lot of things that kids do,'' says Crain. ``Not everything has to be a rush to get into Harvard. Summer is a slower time: It's good to have a sense of the slow rhythm of life.''

Children need to play outside more. They may gravitate to the television or to video games during the lazy days of summer, Crain says. It's up to parents to get them outdoors: to garden with them, to go on walks or bike rides, to explore nearby streams or ponds. Children who can explore nature discover new sources of creativity.

``The trick is to be there for their safety, but give them a chance to be there on their own,'' says Crain.

So we'll have to incorporate some trips to a nearby brook and some hikes in the woods to hunt for frogs. I'm getting tired thinking about all this carefree activity.

There are perils for the parent who is planning a lazy summer. Foremost among these is putting up with children's complaints that they are bored. In fact, I remember making that lament to my own mother. She was less than sympathetic and I will adopt her attitude.

Boredom is just a stumbling block on the road to creativity. To put it another way: If they're bored enough, they'll make up new games. There are perhaps more dangers for us parents. Having the children home for most of the summer means (gulp) having the children home for most of the summer.

That means those small windows of free time during the school year disappear. We will all have to learn the zen of slowing down for the summer. It might be a harder lesson for Mom than for the children. After all, they're the ones blowing the bubbles. I'm the one out there buying them.

In the end, I'm reasonably sure my children will have golden memories of their long, lazy summer. As for me, check back with me at the end of the summer. It's possible a lazy summer will be too much work. By September, I might be at my own summer camp. One with padded walls.

* This is a revised version of a column that appeared in the Times of Trenton in June of 2003

Family Meals: The Secret Weapon Against Childhood Obesity

When everyone’s home, I sometimes feel like a short order cook. Lunch, dinner, breakfast, I cook it all up with a smile. Mostly.

This means more dishes and more headaches. Today, for example, my older son and my husband both sat down to lunch late and Raymond had just a few bites of potato salad and a few mouthfuls of chicken. Sigh.

But the good news is that children of parents who cook at home and who eat together as a family are less likely to be obese. This was one of the interesting points food advocate Michael Pollan made in his piece in the New York Times Magazine Sunday on how cooking is becoming a spectator sport, with watching cooking shows becoming more popular than actually cooking.

In an interview on NPR, Pollan explained that many adults are watching an hour of cooking shows while spending only half an hour on meal preparation.

I don’t watch cooking shows and I usually spend half an hour to an hour at the most on meal preparation because who has time? I tend to get a bit huffy when people start ranting about not enough time being spent in the kitchen because in most houses it’s the mom who spends time in the kitchen. And if Mom doesn’t want to lovingly prepare meals after working all day, that’s her prerogative.

That said, I do spend time lovingly preparing meals because I believe in them. Yes, we are having hot dogs for dinner tonight. But on most nights, I at least slice up some vegetables for my little darlings.

It turns out all the alarm over the disappearance of family meals may be overblown. Researchers who tracked 14,000 children from 1996 to 1999 in the “Growing Up Today,” study released earlier this year found that 84 percent said they eat home most days or every day. The other good news for all those families who do have a family dinner hour is that the children who did eat at home most days were 15 percent more likely to be obese. (See an article on the study and other obesity studies here).

The researchers noted that while family dinners may not prevent obesity, they at least ensure that children are getting good food. The obesity rate for children ages 2 to 5 increased from a 1976 to 2000 study to a 2003 to 2006 study from 5 to 12 percent, and from 6 to 17 percent among 6 to 11 year olds, according to the CDC.

There are complex reasons for obesity that go deeper than family meals. But it’s good to know while I’m sweating over that hot stove, that I’m keeping my kids healthy when I’m, keeping them away from McDonald’s.