And When You Finally Fly Away...

I told you I would be back...you know, it's called "thus-it-continues" for a reason...and here, my loves, is your fix (well, your fix, Bridget...my little blog junkie...)...

So I am going to skip over all the happenings since last time...the trip to Bermuda and all that fun and sun and the Swizzles and hot stone massages and the togetherness with my kids...and that second anaphylactic reaction, this time to a Caesar salad (WTF???) at Little Venice on Bermudiana Road in Hamilton...which was extra fun as my Epipen was left behind on my counter in Wyckoff. I am skipping over that...and

I am skipping over my road trip to Boston the following week...Sam and me, visiting TL at Stonehill, hanging with Cirque du Soleil roadies, dinner and drinks at Clink in the Liberty Hotel, shopping in the North End, Jeanne's seaside 40th birthday party in Marblehead... I am skipping over the Gourmet Girls and our Trailer Trash-themed dinner at my house, complete with Tater-Tots, Frito Pie, Trailer Trash names (call me Crystal Dawn, thank you...), a spot-on psychic friend reading Tarot cards and Suse in a Hooters Girl outfit (yes, they sell those things...and I think a few of you saucier friends out there may be in the market for one...(Latzy??)...just saying...)... And I am skipping over the days at the Indian Trail Club, Sam and me in shotgun lounge chairs, drinking Tea-ade like it is our job and watching the kids kick a** in their swim meets... And, lastly, I will skip over the summer parties and cocktails and fun with the girls...al fresco and late night with Pina's coconut pineapple vodka deliciousness and a Toffee Bar chaser by SisterG...the summer moments flying by without notice...

I am skipping all of that to tell you about this past weekend....my trip to Asheville, NC...my Dad along too...dropping my first born, my only girl...my sweet, sweet little darling, Ellie, at sleepaway camp for two whole weeks. Six states away...in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the border of Tenne-effin-see, God and Dolly Parton country. My little future agnostic (sorry, Mom!) and dyed in the wool Northeast offspring out there with her brandy-new Bible and the lighthearted Southern belles...what have I done?!?! Waaaaahhhhh!!! Actually...Camp Hollymont for Christian Girls (please, Jim Eber, try not to p*ss yourself...remember, I am a graduate of the Academy of the Holy Angels -- or "Wh*res On the Hill," according to Stacey...), is a beautiful, welcoming, loving place housed for the summer on the grounds of a girl's boarding school (wh*res on the hill, this is not...). There are bouncy blond college-girl counselors (mini-Carrie Underwoods) and fresh-faced little girls spending all day swimming and horseback riding and learning archery and cheerleading and tennis and golf and taking babysitting classes and, of course, participating in morning devotions...(that's prayer and song to all you non-Christ believers...). What a cool place...in fact, I am going to suggest they start offering a week for jaded suburban moms...our activities would be more like mixing the perfect martini and how to craft the cutest swim suit cover up...I know at least 18 women that would sign up with me, no???

Anyway...we are not sleepaway camp aficionados...this process is no rite of passage among the Rittereiser-Andersons...and that is not because we are against the experience or have a problem with it in concept. In fact, I have always looked on in fascination at my friends for whom sending the kids away to summer camp is not an "if" but a "when"... there are girls that Ellie has grown up with who have been away for 7 full weeks every year since second grade and love every second of it. And I wouldn't have sought it out...but Ellie wanted in... honest truth...Ellie asked, pleaded and would not let it go...she was going away to camp come hell or high water and she was going to make it her mission to have more fun than those double pre-crackhead Lindsay Lohans in Parent Trap if it was the last thing she'd do...

So of course the past few months were spent running up bills on all the camp accouterments... the horseback riding gear...the bedding and clothes and towels and new hiking shoes...and an extra premium so that she might partake of the whitewater rafting trip the camp offered. Yes...my not even 11 year old will be whitewater rafting in the Nantahala River on the edge of the Smoky Mountains...well, she beat me by 20 some-odd years! And we did all the planning and paying and medical check-up getting and plane ticket buying...and we arrived this weekend, leaving the house among hugs and hidden tears and promises to write. Now, just an aside...the trip to Newark Airport on Saturday afternoon alone could fill a complete blog post on its own. On top of being mistaken for my Dad's wife...(gag...puke...I almost had to be transported to the hospital after that mix up)...let's just sum it up by saying that Terminal A might as well be a Greyhound station...catering to all those regional airlines and bizarre, little fourth-rung cities like Eau Claire, WI and Burlington, VT (ok, that's third-rung but who needs to fly there from NJ...wtf??) and Jackson, MS and Springfield, MO. Thankfully, I have little to no experience in Terminal A...and that is good because I could feel the people and Middle America (Crystal Dawn!) vibe kind of eating me and my Dad up like those vampires in Twilight... Anyway...it added to the atmosphere and the overall feel of the trip, if nothing else...

We arrived in Charlotte and drove to Asheville and stayed at some crusty, kinda ratty Crowne Plaza Golf & Tennis "Resort"...I use the term very lightly...and it was late but we had dinner in their freaky dining room and were served our meals 20 full minutes apart from one another -- the pork chops in what I think was French's mustard sauce, arriving to Ellie and Dad way ahead of my mini overcooked beef tenderloins (no seafood, remember???...)...and I didn't care because I wasn't really in the mood anyway, and none of us even batted an eye or complained...but the waiter felt so bad he comped our whole meal...?????????? My Dad argued for a few minutes and then gave up...actually, the French's mustard sauce alone should have rendered the meal free, so....we have booked The Biltmore for the return trip...

The next morning we made like the locals and hit some little Southern diner and had these giant breakfasts for a total of $15...and then off we were to Camp Hollymont...well after my Dad blew through a red light to enter I-240...hey we made it there alive, didn't we? Um...just barely... Anyway, so we drive up the long and winding driveway passing signs "You're Almost at Camp Hollymont!" "Keep Going!" and taking note of the old ivy covered academic buildings (one named "Anderson Hall"...) and the Boyd Chapel and the gorgeous vistas...rolling hills into a valley between the Blue Ridge Mountains. And straight ahead there were 26 mini-Carrie Underwoods waving us in...and in a whirlwind we were greeted and welcomed and some cute boys from the brother camp, Rockmont (for Christian boys...who all seem to be built like Mark Wahlberg...maybe they would run the Moms' camp...????...) helped Dad unload the bags. And soon enough we were all checked-in and paid up and Ellie's temperature was taken and we met her counselor, Ashley...more like a mini-Kelly Clarkson...who brought us to Ellie's dorm room. We unpacked her clothes and newly monogrammed beach and bath towels (Thanks Kerry!) and made her bed with the ice blue and lime green polka dotted sheets and the matching ice blue quilt. And the roommates and "cluster-mates" all came in and we met their parents and found out they were from Birmingham and Chicago and Atlanta...and Paris, believe it or not... And they began the getting to know you stuff as the one roommate covered her walls with Taylor Lautner posters.

And I watched as Ellie shyly answered and asked questions, silently growing more and more comfortable with the girls, yet petrified as the day progressed...soon we would have to leave her here, six states away in the Blue Ridge Mountains on the border of Tenne-effin-see with the drawling mini-Carrie Underwoods. Ellie is more a strawberry pre-teen Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles...cute and sensitive and innocent, yet composed and mature...would they "get her" here? There was a developing pit in my stomach too as the years flashed before my eyes...Dr. Faust saying "Well hello, Elizabeth" as he delivered her...and that morning in 2002 when she started at Grace Church Nursery with her pigtails and her "Never Forget" American flag t-shirt and those precious red gingham Keds...and her first dance recital where she wore this "wh*re on the hill" candy apple red lipstick with her little green tutu...and the day Will was born and how p*ssed she was that he was not the sister she had asked for (Tim was more than enough brother for her...)...and that moment she held him in her arms and I watched her fall in love with him...as she looked into his eyes, as if she always knew him...like he was always meant to be her brother. Wasn't all of that only a few months ago? And here I was separating from her...no contact beyond notes and letters...and a few glimpses of her camping fun on the Hollymont website. I was feeling sick...but I knew that she would be better once we left....so we did...even after prolonging it beyond all expectations. Dad and I hugged her and kissed her and told her we loved her and that the two weeks would fly. But as soon as I turned my back I bawled like a girl...and it took me hours to stop. My baby is growing up. Ouch.

Hours later I sat in Terminal A at the airport in Charlotte (much less "Night of the Living Dead" than Newark's Terminal A, thank goodness...) awaiting the new departure time for our already two hour delayed flight home, reading Vanity Fair and Bon Appetit. My makeup had dried up and cracked off long before...and my eyes were bloodshot and I was spontaneously choking back tears without warning. Was I going to feel this way for two whole weeks...would I eventually stop missing her?

And then there was this flight to Houston boarding at our gate...and never had I heard this before, but when the gate crew announced pre-boarding, before the One Pass Elite members and the First Class passengers and people with screaming kids...this time the first passengers invited to board were the "uniformed military." And I remembered the guy...tall, handsome, young 20's in tan and faded green fatigues and combat boots... who had walked in earlier and sat behind me...and when they called for military personnel, I heard him and those seated with him stand up and this terrible whimpering began...which grew to sniffles and crying...and I sneaked a look over my shoulder and watched as this soldier's sisters and Mom wept and hugged him, saying that they loved him, telling him to be careful and they were praying they would see him again...his Dad keeping his cool but clearly terribly sad. I remembered seeing the Mom wiping her tears in the bathroom mirror earlier...and I remembered thinking "what sh*tty thing did some guy do to her?" Never for a second thinking she was crying over her child...just like I was... And her child wasn't swimming and horseback riding and learning archery or cheerleading...her child was being deployed...one of the other passengers told me the soldier was being sent back to his base in Texas, meeting up with his unit and then off to the Middle East. So his Mom wouldn't be returning in two weeks to pick her baby up like I would. Sh*t... The soldier boarded the plane and everyone in the gate watched the family, four across, hand-in-hand, walking away...the Mom turning once to watch him disappear down the platform. I could not see through my own tears as I watched.

And I gained some perspective.

I am not diminishing the difficulty of leaving Ellie and flying away from her...the first time I was truly out of reach to her...but I know that in (less than) two weeks, the pit in my stomach will be gone and she will be freckled and bright-eyed and happy with a whole collection of new friends and amazing experiences...and I was almost guaranteed that I would get her back in one piece. Seeing the military family and watching that Mom crystallized the whole experience for me...and showed me once again how privileged I am to be a mother of three...and to know virtually for certain that when I send them away, I will see them all again. Blessed and lucky.

Love to all my babies and sweet darlings out there...miss you...

xoxo

Suz/Crystal Dawn

Photos:

1. Soaking up the Bermudian sun, cruising Hamilton Harbor pre-snorkel...let me assure you, I had a Swizzle in hand...

2. A few hours after snorkeling, Will and I sit down to dinner at Little Venice...and shortly thereafter I am popping Benadryl like a maniac...praying the anaphylaxis subsides...

3. Sam and I enjoying a cocktail at Clink in Boston...I was totally wishing it was Indian Trail Club Tea-ade...

4. Trailer Trash sisters...the Hooters Girl...the double beer hat wearer...and the pregnant chain smoker....Cheez Doodles and 32 oz. Budweisers...mmmm, baby!! All we need is a Jerry Springer marathon!

5. God or Dolly...in the Blue Ridge Mountains, there is no distinction...

6. Oh...damn, the little trainwreck was adorable back then...talk about tragic...

7. Ellie gives a final hug to the boys on the front porch before heading out...

8. Swerving onto I-40 towards Asheville with my Dad at the wheel...

9. Ellie at Camp Hollymont...the Blue Ridge Mountains indecipherable in the lighting but right there, behind her...

10. Young Mom and Baby...Ellie already my strawberry girl at 10 months...

11. Illegally lifted from the Hollymont site, Ellie in her riding gear...

12. Beautiful babies...my three and me...