By Sue Murphy
I admire people who enjoy camping. I’d love to be able to say that the thing that made me relax was to leave my warm bed and cell phone and TV behind to spend a few nights sleeping on the ground. Sadly, this is not true. In fact, the very idea makes my throat close up. Like Fran Lebowitz said, I find I am not one of those people who wants to get back to nature. I want to get back to the hotel.
Curiously, I had no trouble foisting camping on my children. It would be good for them, I reasoned. Whenever their trusted troop leaders sent home the permission slip, I said, “Here’s a bedroll and a compass, honey. Have a lovely time.” My older daughter took to camping immediately and went on to become a camp counselor for fun but very little profit. When my younger daughter was told that her college orientation included three showerless days at a makeshift camp, she fell into hysterical crying.
Both daughters have enrolled their daughters in scouting, but the girls are still at the “sell cookies and make a craft” stage. My 5-year-old grandson will join a Wolf pack when he hits kindergarten, but his 10-year-old cousin stands poised to bridge into full-fledged scouting and has the camping chops to prove it. (The ceremony will include shooting flaming arrows into the lake. Who wouldn’t like that?)
I can’t join my grandchildren in their camping pursuits (Really, I can’t. See “throat close up” above.), so I’m pondering putting together an alternate shared adventure: Camp Grandma.
Camp Grandma would be held at a suite hotel that has an indoor pool and a complimentary breakfast buffet. This venue includes several of my favorite things: no chance of snakes in the water, no sunburn, no mosquitoes whatsoever. When the Camp Grandma reveille sounds (and by that I mean whenever we wake up), we will take an elevator hike down to a breakfast that includes silly cereals and waffles they scoop and flip themselves.
After that, we’ll have a makeshift flag ceremony at a nearby post office or VFW hall, followed by a neighborhood scavenger hunt, where we’ll collect clues I have stealthily hidden at Starbucks and Chick-fil-A and one of those jumpy places that (thank you very much) have air conditioning. After a quick hike-thru lunch, we’ll return to the hotel for quiet time, when they can write “wish you were here” postcards to their parents who, trust me, will indeed wish they were there instead of cleaning out the garage.
Afternoon craft time will include lessons in toilet paper decoupage and towel origami. As the sun begins to sink in the west, we’ll contemplate our dinner options. Brown bag? Room service. Cooking over an open fire? A visit to the Tappan table restaurant down the street? We’ll end the day with a sing-along Disney movie in a dimly lit room around a big screen TV as we enjoy soothing K-Cup hot chocolate. Unless we decide to call down for extra pillows for a pillow fight, the kids will soon be drifting off to sleep and if anyone really wants to sleep under the stars, I’ll open the drapes. If I throw in a morning and afternoon swim, by the end of the weekend, the kids will return home happy and well-rested and not in need of a chigger-ridding bath.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? If the kids don’t like the idea, I may just do it myself. Maybe I’m a camper after all. It just depends on where you do it.
