Roger Pires Sept 06, 2009
When he's not offering his take on daily life, Roger Pires spends his days as a computer systems analyst. It's not exactly a glamorous calling but hey, it pays the bills. He enjoys hockey, canoeing, snowshoeing, and spending as much time as he possibly can outdoors. He lives in Udora with his wife and two kids, who are his prime inspiration for Ravenshoe Ramblings.
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Home alone
D-day had arrived. We had marked the event across an entire week of the calendar in letters large enough to be seen from space.
“BOTH KIDS AT CAMP!” The exclamation mark was, of course, frivolous. There is no punctuation in the English language that could build on the wallop of excitement that those four words delivered. And as the kids hauled bag after blessed bag into the minivan, my wife and I high-fived each other across the kitchen like a couple of sprinters who had just passed their urine tests.
We tried to remember when the two of us last spent a week alone. According to my wife, the last time we had celebrated such a harmonic convergence, my hairline was at the stage where it still needed combing. We had sent our daughter to visit some relatives on the east coast and my son was still a candlelit dinner for two and a bottle of Zinfandel.
It all seemed like a dream. The minivan had been transformed from convenient mode of family transportation to supply warehouse. It was stuffed from rafters to floorboards with hockey bags, duffels, pillows, knapsacks, and that old camp staple: the makeup case, fully stocked with mirrors and eyeliner. After all, nothing offends wildlife more than a forehead without pimple cream. There was just enough room between the stockpiles for an adolescent arm to coax a disc into the DVD player.
At once, the debate commenced as to what the in-flight movie would be. Little brother lobbied for “Iron Man” while big sister campaigned for “Twilight”. The debate showed signs of turning into a blood feud, so mom and I delivered an ultimatum. There would be sibling détente or the journey would be spent listening to The Golf Show on FAN590. A compromise was hammered out and they settled for episodes of “Frasier” which we keep around for reasons of diplomacy.
The journey to camp in the 21st century is a far cry from those harrowing treks in the back of a ’68 Malibu. In the days before seat belts, we acted out lunar landings while laying in the back window well. Our soundtrack for the journey to Camp Boot Strap was the knocking of the engine.
We snaked up Highway 11 and released the campers into the wilds of Muskoka. As I watched my son lug his sleeping bag down the lane to his cabin, yellowing, dog-eared memories of long-ago camps came back to me. I remembered platefuls of beans. And offering up my entire night’s milk ration for the melting sliver of pork fat that the kid next to me had the good fortune to possess. Truth was, there wasn’t enough milk in Kansas to pry that gold nugget away. The “pork” in the cauldron of pork and beans was the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow. And I remembered my poor cabin mate who sadly chose poison oak as a substitute for toilet paper. His shrieks of agony haunt me still. Our kids wouldn’t be waking up in a cold sweat from a nightmare involving gray porridge thick enough to hold a tablespoon upright for a minute-and-a-half. Their camp menus boasted such delicacies as lasagna, five different kinds of cereal, grilled cheese sandwiches, French toast, fresh fruit, and flush toilets.
And so it was, that after dropping off the urchins at Camp Gourmet, my wife and I were home alone. Empty nesters. Honeymooners. The next two weeks would be the definition of bliss. We were, of course, kidding ourselves. The first few days certainly did live up to expectations. No TV blaring. No thundering hooves across pine floors. No stereo belting out noise by bands with names like Howling Monkeys, The Legless Crickets, or whatever. But then something funny happened on the way to the isolation tank. My Cheshire cat grin had left me and my wife was no longer dancing across the yard like Maria in “The Sounds of Music”. We started missing the little rascals. I’m not sure what that makes us. Pathetic and weak comes to mind.
We missed the chaos and the thundering hooves. We couldn’t imagine life without hordes of noisy raiders emptying the fridge, and dispatching an entire pack of cheese strings before plundering an enemy village. We missed the experience of watching our teenaged daughter – the Beethoven of text messaging – pecking out piano concertos on her cell phone to fellow composers. And whose masterpieces debut in cyberspace as a stream of acronyms and punctuation. Here’s a sample exchange between two grand masters:
Teen 1: “where r u?”
Teen 2: “@ home. U?”
Teen 1: “@ home 2. Im board.”
Teen 2: “u mean bored. LOL.”
Teen 1: “ J.”
It appears that human communication has come full circle. I don’t know if the next generation of dictionaries will be little more than a collection of cave drawings. But I do know this: we’re not cut out to be empty nesters. Not yet anyway. .
