Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Letters to Iwo Jima

Only one of my kids is going to camp this year and for more than just fun. I took my daughter to the Concodia Language Camp yesterday where she will spend two weeks immersed in Japanese. In a couple months she'll have her rotary interview to see if she might be able to go to Japan in her Jr. year and this, combined with her independant studies in Japanese at school, will hopefully convince them that she can survive in Japan without calling anyone an umbrella.

But the real predicament is that my kids have been going to camps for the past nine years and I'm starting to run dry in the "letter from home" department. I have found that I dispise writing the traditional letter from mom that lists all of the things that the kid already knows...home is boring and you're lucky you're not here.

Now, my kids have never suffered from homesickness and they absolutely love going to camp so I don't have to worry about covering that whole schtick. I feel free to be creative and hopefully entertaining.

I believe I sent a letter once from the cat, a short, terse missive to my daughter on how the cat was mobilizing her forces for the revolution and by the time my daughter got back from camp, the government would be in the hands of felines everywhere.

Then there was the letter to my son which included photos of the toaster and coffee maker which, unbeknownst to me, were having quite the squabble behind my back. It all ended violently when the coffee maker pulled a water pistol and shorted out the plugged in toaster.

Now that we have a dog, of course I'm sending the first camp letter from him. It is, of course, typed in all caps, full of ADD observations, and goes absolutely nowhere. The literary equivalent of chasing the nub that is your tail.

But what next? Camp is two weeks, the feline revolution failed, and the new toaster and coffeemaker are best friends.

Ideas????

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Suggestions would be to explore one new (to you) place in your town each day. Maybe include one picture per place. The place could be one of the many natural settings around town unknown to the general tourist populace or an institution of higher learning (what's really in the bell tower @ CSS?) or something new and developing or maybe doing something you have never done before but it has always been in the back of your mind. Sit in one of those seedy bars for an hour and see something others don't see. There has to be some part of Duluth you haven't visited or something you have yet to do (blast a soccer mom and run off with the nuts)... Your perspective is refreshing!

Anne Gridley said...

My mother for years wrote letters from the dog, our corgi. Calling her OG, for Old Girl. I always found it amusing.