Amateur Hour

by Kimberly Harrington

  Don’t worry.

  As my children get older, more capable, I find myself loosening up. Maybe that’s why my anxiety is now pointing inward, at myself, instead of outward at them. My son has pushed past and learned to control so much of the anxiety that crippled him when he was little. But if I’ve learned anything, anxiety is as adaptable as a virus. It will be with him, always. Even he understands this. So why can’t I?

  Maybe that’s why my daughter’s question rang out so clearly to me, hitting me square. I can still hear it ringing out. It’s a question I’ve started asking myself.

  “Do you have faith in me?”

  “I do!” I yelled back in response to this question she had never, not once, asked me before. Tears leaped to my eyes, no one around us grasping the explosion of meaning in our exchange.

  A girl who scooted past her, a girl she had never met before shouted, “I HAVE FAITH IN YOU!” and that seemed to mean just as much as my reply.

  She asked one last time, “Do you have faith in me?!”

  I shouted back “I do!” and the scooter girl zipped between us again and repeated, “I HAVE FAITH IN YOU!”

  Do you have faith in me, I do, I have faith in you. This circle so snug between the three of us. A mother, a daughter, a peer. In that moment, the balance so exquisite between what our parents tell us and what our peers encourage. How they become equal, one meaning as much as the other, even if that peer is a stranger. How the people who know us the least are sometimes just as much a vote of confidence as those who know us best. The people who know us well, giving us too much leeway, maybe support and feed our fears too much. The people who don’t know us, believing anything is possible, push us and make us brave.

  We need both.

  I repeat this to myself now, in a round. In those moments, the moments when I worry, the moments when I wonder, Is this happening again? Could the worst happen? I think, Do you have faith in me?

  I do.

  I have faith in you.

  Thirteen with Dudes

  If you have camped more than once, then you have had a best-worst camping trip. A best-worst camping trip is when everything somehow went wrong and right, where you were close to pulling the rip cord on the whole thing but then were rewarded handsomely for staying the course. Maybe it started out with having to tarp an entire site and set up two tents in a crashing thunderstorm, as my husband and kids had to just a few weeks ago—finally retreating to the truck when it all became too unmanageable, too terrifying, and too swear-y. How would I know if I wasn’t there? Because these details—especially the swearing details—were the first things my kids blurted out when they busted through the door that Sunday afternoon.

  Regardless, sometimes thunderstorms give way to vivid rainbows seen in full, or a gorgeous afternoon of jumping off docks and lazy canoeing, or maybe an after-lunch nap in a shaded tent, skin warm and fragrant from sunscreen, piney bug spray, and sweat. And sometimes your worst moment is almost getting into a fist fight with people twenty years younger than you only to tumble straight into the best idea in the entirety of the parenting canon.

  On this particular trip, we were camping at Burton Island State Park, an idyllic spot on an actual island in Lake Champlain. Meaning, you need to take a ferry there; meaning, you can’t just fill your car up to the rearview mirror with your crap and let it explode at your campsite; meaning, this park is in such high demand everyone reserves prime sites the year before and might be a bit amped by the time they get there, weighed down with bags and bikes and beer.

  Our campsite was tucked into the woods, with that elusive balance of shade and sunlight, and with a clear view of the lake across the path from us. We also had a view of all the lucky bastards who had reserved the lakefront sites and lean-tos, close enough to hear the teeny-tiny lake waves lap at the rocks and exposed tree roots. I imagined them all being logged into the state parks reservations systems at midnight the day the sites came online. I admired them and hated them in equal measure.

  Our site was also located entirely too close—really, within punching distance—to a group of twentysomething fuckheads who only grew in number, dogs, and tequila as the night wore on. We overenthusiastically engaged our kids in conversation for the sole purpose of distracting them from the Kid Rock cruise-on-land that was unfolding next to us.

  Our kids were eight and ten, and for some reason I felt like that was maybe a little too young to have to hear a bunch of dipshits and their chorus of simple sentences that were mostly constructed as such: subject + fucking + verb + fucking + direct object. We kept them up late, knowing there was nothing regular about a regular bedtime in this situation. Besides, we hoped the late night would push them over the edge sleepiness-wise and allow them to crash even though they were only separated from Dumbassmageddon by a thin nylon barrier.

  Jon and I kept drinking, in the hopes it would also send us into a dead sleep. But mostly what it did was simultaneously take the edge off while creating new, different edges. The kind of edges attached to knife handles. We hated every single human being at that campsite. Like an old movie, the clock hands whirled fast past 9:00 p.m., then past quiet hours at 10:00 p.m., 11:00 p.m., OH MY GOD, MIDNIGHT, HOW MUCH DO WE HAVE TO DRINK TO MAKE THIS END?

  Finally, my nonconfrontational husband teetered over to their site with his headlamp on and his millionth beer in hand. It took him maybe five steps total to get there. Pretty sure when he got there one of the guys was slapping a girl’s ass as they all hooted and hollered. I hate people.

  He piped up with a “Guys. It’s midnight. My kids are asleep. They’ve had to listen to you swearing and screaming all night. Can you wrap it up?”

  One loudmouth said something back that I think contained vowels and consonants but mostly just sounded like Barney from The Simpsons. Jon came back. They started to break it up, meaning not go to bed but just take their booze and go to the edge of the water or up to the meadow, and I wouldn’t have cared if they went to Mars as long as they got the hell away from us.

  We stayed by our fire for another few minutes, enjoying the break in our jaw-clenching battle of livers. In an attempt to stop fantasizing about shooting flaming arrows at their campsite, I noticed that the lakefront campsites and lean-tos across from us seemed to be occupied by one giant group. All of the adults over there were also still up, around their huge campfire. There were tons of kids—so many kids—now all asleep in their tents.

  When we had set up earlier that day, there were teenagers standing on the roofs of the lean-tos armed with Super Soakers and younger kids plastering themselves up against trees and tents, trying not to be seen. All-out war was constantly raging across at least six campsites, it was a borderless, lawless country. We were hemmed in by dipshits to the left and a sovereign nation in front of us. On a friggin’ island no less.

  A few things about this sovereign nation had caught my eye however. I thought back and realized the kids were a crazy range of ages, from maybe seven years old all the way up to teenagers and even college kids. Everyone gathered for meals, got ready for bed, brushed teeth, and set out for the day together. Kayaking, swimming, whatever, it was done in a group. It wasn’t just one endless Lord of the Flies over there. Sure, it looked like that initially, but there was definitely a method to the madness.

  And, above all else, the kids were really nice. I didn’t totally approve of them tromping all over the roofs of the lean-tos, because come on. But when my son stood at the end of our campsite’s pathetic little dirt path and stared longingly at all the fun they were having, two of the teenage kids—not the youngest kids, but teenagers!—came over and said, “Hey, buddy, do you want to play?” and brought him into the fold.

  Something was going on. Something was . . . off. But somehow something was very, very right.

  Like a dope slap to the side of the head I whipped around to my husband and said, “THERE ARE NO MOMS ON THAT CAMPING TRIP OVER THERE.” And he looked at me, surveyed the scene, and laughed, “Holy sh
it, you’re RIGHT.” Suddenly the absence of nagging, assorted soul-crushing instructions, and general fun-killing finally made sense. Not to mention all that fearless scaling of lean-tos. But those kids were happy. They were free and wild, yet not given a free pass to act like jerks, unlike the shitheads next to us.

  “You should do that. You should have a camping trip like that.”

  The very next summer, that’s exactly what Jon did with our other dad friends and their kids. And Dad Camp was officially born. On Father’s Day weekend no less.

  I can’t speak to the particulars of what unfolded over that first weekend, because they were not shared with me. I knew not to ask too many questions, one, because I wouldn’t get many answers, and, two, because I didn’t really care. The kids were gone, I had a weekend to myself, and everyone came home on Sunday. What’s to know?

  But the thing about kids who aren’t teenagers yet is they will gladly narc on their dad given the slightest opportunity. Every year I’ve heard about which dads got in trouble with the park rangers and at least a handful of things they were specifically told “not to tell the moms.” Kids are double agents, man; you can’t ever trust them.

  But what I do know, from stories and videos and the random grab bag of photos I’ve seen over the past few years, is by the end of that weekend there is one big bonded pack of filthy, happy kids. And another big bonded pack of relaxed—and also filthy and happy—dads. Dad Camp is the younger version of the sovereign nation we witnessed on that best-worst camping trip. The youngest campers have been just two or three years old, and my son has always been the oldest, now at thirteen. They’ve dug in the clay at the edge of the water, wolfed down chocolate chip pancakes from the one dad who made those his specialty (and by default ended up feeding breakfast to every single kid on the trip). They’ve canoed and kayaked, gathered around campfires and smacked each other with pool noodles. All without a “Now what do you say?” or a “Be careful!” or a “Are you hungry?”

  They eat when the food is ready. They go brush their teeth when our friend Eric takes out his guitar and leads them in a toothbrushing song he makes up on the spot. This was such a big hit the first year a park ranger noticed and asked him if he would come back and perform at the state park. He declined, but it was a testament to the spirit this big pack of dads and kids brought to the trip (and to Eric’s talent, enthusiasm, and improv abilities, of course).

  Typically at some point a group photo is taken. All the dads. All the kids. Usually it’s raining. When I saw the group photo from the inaugural Dad Camp my first thought was, These are good men.

  I have thought it every year since.

  My eyes scan their faces and I see creative directors and professors, musicians and marketers, a carpenter, writers. For some, that weekend is just one in a series of camping trips they’ll pack into that summer. For others, it’s the one time they’ll camp all year. Every single one of these men is a good husband, a great father, a stellar human being. They are involved in their children’s lives in ways mundane and profound; this trip being just one in a myriad of ways they model what fatherhood looks like now. They model what it should’ve looked like all along.

  They are involved. They are capable. They are smart and funny and let the kids be the unruly creatures they’re meant to be.

  This year, Dad Camp fell not only on Father’s Day weekend, as it usually does, but also on my son’s thirteenth birthday. I am a serious birthday person. Not in the way that I go overboard when it comes to birthdays—although I sometimes do—but in the way that I clear everything from my calendar for my kids’ birthdays. Even when I was working full-time I made sure to take the day off.

  This tradition actually started with me, well before I had kids. All because one day, while I worked on my birthday, I came dangerously close to calling a client a cunt on a conference call. In my defense, she really was a cunt. But it seemed to me if I was expecting other humans to be especially nice and deferential to me on my birthday, work was not the place to spend my day.

  From that moment on I always took my birthday off. And once I became a freelancer? Hell, I’d take the whole week (month?) off. Your birthday is your Birth Day, people. If you’re not gonna celebrate the hell out of it, then who will?

  Your mom, that’s who. That’s why I carried my tradition over to their birthdays. They’re both summer babies, so I never had to contend with getting them out of school (but trust me, I would have). But this? I wasn’t really prepared for this.

  For about six and a half minutes I entertained heading out to their campsite and bringing an ice cream cake. Then I thought about the logistics, how they’d need to definitely be there when I arrived or the cake would melt, how it’d be disruptive to their whole day. I thought about how terrible the reception was out there, how easily something intended to be simple could turn into a frustrating pain in the ass for everyone. But finally what dawned on me was the fact that my son was turning thirteen.

  Thirteen.

  He was going to be a teenager. As silly as this will sound, I was sort of stunned to realize we wouldn’t always be spending his birthday together. I wouldn’t always clear that day in my calendar, we wouldn’t always go out to breakfast or to the granite quarry or a baseball game. We wouldn’t go to McDonald’s for fries and shakes (or as I like to call it, the Vegetarian Special). We wouldn’t plan to haunt construction sites or watch farmers haying or go for ice cream afterward. There wouldn’t be bowling parties or swimming. There wouldn’t even be cake together or a pile of presents wrapped in goofy wrapping paper. There wouldn’t be any need for me to arrange anything to do with his birthday, never mind plan an entire day.

  Recovering, I decided to just let his birthday be his birthday. For the first time, without me.

  Instead, he would turn thirteen with a bunch of dudes. It suddenly seemed more than a compromise; it seemed like the most fitting turn of events. On Day One of his teenage years, he would be surrounded by men modeling how to be a good man. How to be capable and strong, how to be independent and encouraging, and above all, how to have fun without fear. He knew most of these men since he was young enough to remember things and has admired many of them for their senses of humor, their musical chops, their inappropriate jokes, and their adventurous spirits.

  You could do worse on your thirteenth birthday. You could be with your mom as she demands you wear a button-down shirt to a fancy breakfast.

  I asked for their help, I asked them to be my surrogates. I asked them to remember their thirteen-year-old selves, to give him advice, to just help him have a happy birthday. Sure, I was met with the level of smart-assery I’d come to expect, like offers to bring their old Playboys along as well as some outlining of male rites of passage (drinking cow’s blood, waking at dawn), but underneath it all every response told me, “Of course. We’ve got this.”

  The weekend passed in radio silence. No texts, no calls, no FaceTiming, no nothing. My son had left as a twelve-year-old, would return as a thirteen-year-old, and I hadn’t even called him to wish him a happy birthday. I hadn’t hugged him or lit a single candle. His presents awaited him on the dining room table, in a house filled with silence. I pressed my girlfriends into service: “I will cry all day if we don’t do something.” We had cocktails in the afternoon, went to see Wonder Woman, stayed up too late drinking whiskey and telling secrets from our own teenage years. It felt like the beginning of my life fully becoming mine again. Even if for one night, even just for the weekend. I could see it.

  * * *

  When they returned that Sunday, the regular rituals held. They were filthy and happy. They needed to shower, and everything they brought with them—pillows, sleeping bags, sneakers—needed to be washed. In hot water. They were full of stories (although they saved the narcing for Monday morning when Jon left for work. They grow up so fast).

  Jon had brought a bunch of cupcakes for Walker’s birthday, and it turned out my son shared his birthday with another boy on the trip. S
o there were lots of cupcakes and candles, singing and gorging. It was not fancy. It was great. No one overthought it. No one belabored it.

  I thought back to that best-worst camping trip, when I had given the kids permission to make as much noise as they wanted when they rose at 6:00 a.m. It was a delicious form of payback to our still sleeping—and undoubtedly excruciatingly hungover—neighbors (I may have provided pots, pans, and wooden spoons to amplify their efforts).

  And I thought of the sovereign nation across from us as they slowly emerged from their tents. The campfire roaring again, coffee being made by and for tired (and also hungover) dads. Bowls of cereal and egg sandwiches being distributed as everyone huddled around a picnic table or the fire. A community like any community, but this one just happened to be bound by fresh air and Super Soakers.

  While Jon slept, I walked to the campground store to get a coffee, my kids racing ahead of me on their bikes. We had already been up far too long and coffee couldn’t wait. The damp coolness of the early morning was quickly giving way to another blazing summer day.

  We exited the wider path leading to the store, passing the freestanding payphone where we stopped to take photos. Something so standard in my youth, now a hands-on-hips curiosity for my kids. As we got closer to the store I looked over to one of the picnic tables, where two of the girls from the tequila-soaked fuckfest sat. Sunglasses firmly on, they were hunched over and clutching their cups of campground-store coffee as if they were life rafts.

  We poked around the store, this was always one of my favorite parts about camping or vacationing somewhere remote and near water. How the overabundance of choice we live with every day as Americans is whittled down to this reduction sauce of vacation necessity—lures and doughnuts, local newspapers and firewood. Matches, fishing line, jugs of water, butter and eggs, ice cream sandwiches, citronella candles, aloe and sunscreen, candy bars and aluminum foil. We need so little to get by yet convince ourselves we always need more to be happy.