At Last, a Day Camp That Lives Up to Mom’s Memories

This is the time I reflect on my children’s camp-filled summer: Was it fun, challenging, varied enough? Did it offer them moments that might become future memories?

I know my expectations are unrealistic, based on sappy reminiscences of my own day-campships. But I also have proof that those rose-tinted recollections are real. I have a song woven into my vocal cords about a Y day camp in Cambridge, Mass., that occupied three of my youthful summers: “First we swim, then we play, we have drama twice a day, in the sun, in the wind, in the rain. We have lunch at nooooon, it never comes too sooooon. Then we have arts and crafts and gaaaames . . .”

All I really want to re-create for my children is that same promise of structure and freedom, group interaction and self-discovery, quiet times with tactile crafts and exuberant peaks of physical challenge. In other words: I want it all, and I can’t pay a fortune to get it, which rules out at least half the camps in L.A.

This quest has driven my older son, Kenny, through a series of contradictory camp experiences: delightfully messy experiments but too few sports at one camp, ambitious field trips but too much hot-pavement-sitting at another. None quite reached my high standards.

Then came summer 1997, which held the possibility of perfection: a local recreation center offering summer school classes in the morning (the structure! the crafts!) and camp in the afternoon (the sports! the swimming!).

From Day 1 there were signs of impending doom.

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First, 7-year-old Kenny came home concerned that the teenage camp counselor had named his group “The Idiots.” Then he carried home unopened--not just untouched--lunches, saying there had not been time set aside to eat. He was severely sunburned every day, despite my thorough application of waterproof sunscreen and careful inclusion of a spare bottle in his backpack.

One evening I was cheered to learn he had made “a pouch,” envisioning a certain suede and leather thong creation of my Y camp days. That sweet memory went kaput the instant he handed me his scrap of construction paper sewn together with yarn.

Kenny said he was bored. I ventured over to the camp and found ample grounds for boredom. During breaks before and among scheduled activities, the kids were simply grouped in a common area, sitting or squirming at picnic tables. During one break, I watched a much larger 8-year-old playfully shove Kenny up against the soda machine. No counselor came to his rescue.

When swimming was canceled for the rest of the summer (something about a tonier camp having outbid ours for the leased facility), I could stand it no more. Along with the parents of two other children, I pulled my son out--only to find that an alternate camp could not accommodate them for another week.

Out of that predicament was born CLAK--the Camp of Laura, Alex and Kenny--in which we combined the resources of six parents, three baby sitters and one residential Altadena swimming pool to fashion the camp of my memories.

The weeklong Camp CLAK had crafts: tie-dyed T-shirts, bead-making; it had games: in-line skating, miniature golf; it had regular lunches and frequent snacks; and it had swimming every single day.

It also had a major field trip, to Universal Studios, and more minor excursions to the library, the park, a movie or just around the block. And no pushing, no name-calling, no asphalt sitting, no sunburns, even precious little arguing.

When we tie-dyed T-shirts (which read: “CLAK” with an asterisk, underlined in smaller type by “Camp of Laura, Alex and Kenny”), they all wanted to put a big yellow splash across the front, and two smaller dots on the sleeves.

All three insisted on wearing those shirts every day, be they dirty, wrinkled or sticky.

Broad smiles met our group the afternoon we went skating at San Marino’s Lacey Park, a reaction I credited to the matching shirts and the way the three held hands so nicely crossing the parking lot. “Are they . . . triplets?” a passerby at Universal Studios asked Alex’s mom, Jan.

I knew Kenny shared my delight in CLAK when I found him standing on our front porch one morning, scanning every passing car for a glimpse of his co-campers. On the drive to see “A Simple Wish” one afternoon, camper Laura broke into spontaneous praise from the back seat of my little Nissan, where all insisted on sitting side by side: “This is the best, best camp ever!”

“Yeah, the best,” Alex agreed. “Yep!” beamed Kenny, clearly proud that his mom was counselor for a day.

Fact is, the activities at CLAK were not different from things we do as families nearly every weekend. But the notion that it was a real “camp,” with T-shirts to prove it, made the pursuits seem unique. That the counselors at this camp could flex with the group’s collective whim ranked it a cut above other summer camps. That younger siblings were for the most part excluded was another clear plus.

Holding camp at different houses daily also gave each camper a chance to be confident tour guide to his or her home life.

At Laura’s house, she taught the two boys to make intricate plastic bead patterns that her dad later melted into permanent stars, hearts and medallions with an iron. At Alex’s house, he coordinated “Balloon Heaven,” which entailed blowing up dozens of balloons and scattering them around his home, then touring each other through the balloon-filled rooms. At our house, Kenny organized a wild match of hide-and-seek that only petered out when Alex hid so well no one could find him.

None of us is ready to trade our jobs for camp directorships, but we are busily planning CLAK for next year. Maybe we’ll extend it to two weeks instead of one. Maybe we’ll open half-day memberships to the younger brothers and sisters, if the older ones agree. Maybe we’ll even squeeze in an overnight camp-out in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Maybe we’ll have to come up with our own song.