Camping

When I was younger, my Mom would take my siblings and me on camping trips...usually by herself. Five young kids and her. I seriously do not know how she did this. I have asked her and she simply has said, "I just needed something to do in the summers!" Those were the days when putting up a tent was like taking a strand of dental floss in your mouth and trying to tie a bow with your tongue.

One summer, I remember we were gone for a long time. My Mom said she made a plan to camp all throughout Michigan.

At one camp site, we had the incident of the raccoon. I know my sisters who are reading this right now are probably laughing. We had gone to the bathroom area to wash up for the night and when we returned, there were some raccoons trying to get into the cooler. My Mom freaked out and was screaming like a crazy woman and we joined in. Someone jumped on a back of another. These crazy experience always left us laughing so hard at the end of the chaos. At this same campground, one of my sisters cut her head open on a slide, so my mom took her to get stitches. I would have put up the white flag of surrender and gone home. Not my Mom though; we pressed on to the next camp ground.

We made so many one-time friends. We would spend the day roaming the campgrounds exploring. (Although, times have changed since I was a kid. I don't know how I could do that with our daughters today and not feel worried-sick, not knowing where they were.)

We always made yummy food. I still love to this day having tin foil dinners. We had a lot of hot dogs and potato chips. Lots of s'mores, jiffy pop popcorn, and fruit pies. You know the healthy stuff! I loved the cinnamon sugar pies we could make for breakfasts. At least one day a week, my Mom made a hot breakfast, but for the most part, it was cereal.

My Mom told me that at one point on this trip, she took us to a hotel for one night just so she could bathe in hot water and get all of us kids cleaned. And to sleep on a real bed. I don't blame her.

Another summer, our family went on a 3-week camping trip across the United States when I was about 13. We stayed at KOA campgrounds the whole trip. One of the stops was in Arizona. This campground had a swimming pool, and I remember the water feeling heavy, like oil. There was a family who was staying there and everyone who was older, including the women, had long armpit hair. Interesting for my young, 13-year-old self to see.

This same campground became the grounds for an infamous bug story for our family. It was probably mid -day, and we were sitting around the fire pit, when we start hearing this buzzing noise. It grew louder and louder as it approached our site. We saw this big, black thing approaching us, and all chaos ensued:

My Dad, who is a jolly man, tried to leap out of his metal lawn chair, thus breaking it. My brother, who was about 10, and my Dad stayed outside as the rest of us went into the camper screaming and laughing so hard we were crying, because my Dad then tried using that broken chair to swing that big bug out of the park and score a home run, while my brother attempted to scream the bug away. That male instinct to protect kicked in, I guess. Afterward, we laughed so hard trying to figure out why this bug just came straight for us and then left. It sure makes for a fun memory though.

Our little family tried camping a couple summers ago, and all I could think was, "How can this be enjoyable for anyone with small children?!?" I am not a lost cause though. I have hope that one day, when all the kids have learned how to wipe their own rears and not pee in the bed, that camping will be a very fun and a cheap way of vacationing. So, in about 8 years, camping may be a feasible thing.

As for my Mom, she is a super hero in my mind. It makes the week I just had seem bearable, knowing she was able to take 5 little ones camping by herself for weeks-on-end and still be smiling at the end of the day. It makes getting to clean up throw-up multiple times in the middle of the night seem like a piece of cake. It is wonderful to have an example of enduring to the end when life around you can seem a little daunting.