Letters From Camp (Part I): What We Hold When They’re Gone

It’s only been a week.

Barely seven days since we zipped her bag closed, folded her favorite things into place, and tucked a letter into her backpack. Barely seven days since she climbed onto the camp bus with a wide smile and steady energy, no tears, no hesitation. She was ready. She waved through the window with a wide smile, sunlight catching her joy like it had been waiting all year to rise.

She sent us a waving GIF from camp a few days later—just a few seconds of motion, pixelated and sweet. Somehow, it said everything and nothing at all. Still, it arrived at just the right moment.

Since then, there have been no calls. No quick texts. No real-time check-ins. Only the quiet rhythm of letter-writing, each envelope a bridge between here and there. I’ve written three already. One about the Mets game—Nimmo’s grand slam, the baby’s marathon of snacks. One about how proud we are of her, how much we love her. One filled with pictures, stickers, and a joke card meant to make her laugh. I find myself lingering over each letter, choosing my words carefully, as though she might be able to feel the intention behind them before they even reach her hands.

I wonder what she’s holding on to from home. I wonder if she’s brushing her hair in the mornings, or letting it tangle into summer freedom. I wonder if she remembered that I packed her moisturizer, and whether she’s using it. I wonder if she’s getting enough sleep, or staying up late giggling in the dark with new friends. I hope she’s finding time to read—really read—the way she loves to when no one is rushing her. I hope she’s feeling brave and kind, open and grounded. I hope she’s making friends who see her clearly, and that she’s beginning to see herself in new, surprising ways.

These are the details I can no longer tend to. The small care tasks I once monitored gently, now passed into her hands. Perhaps that’s the quiet ache underneath all this: not knowing, not controlling, not reminding. Trusting. Believing. Letting.

Writing to a child who cannot answer changes something in the heart. It becomes less about information and more about presence. It becomes a way of saying: I’m here. I’m thinking of you. You are held, even from afar.

The house feels different now. Not just quieter, but spiritually rearranged. It is as if her presence left a trace that lingers in the air, reshaping the way light settles into corners. The tone of our family has shifted in ways that are hard to name. Without her, something essential feels momentarily dispersed. The energy they all create together—the layered, electric harmony of siblings building imaginary worlds, colliding and reconnecting—has changed. She brings a heightened joy, a sense of play that knits the others together. Without it, the air feels still. Waiting.

On Shabbat morning, the quiet settles before we even open our eyes.

There are no squeals from the playroom, no tumbling footsteps, no peals of laughter ricocheting down the hallway. The usual soundscape—joyful, chaotic, pulsing with shared energy—has quieted into something dense and unfamiliar. The baby babbles gently from her crib, but it doesn’t rise into the symphony of voices that usually fills our mornings. Her brother walks softly into our room and climbs into bed beside us without a word. His movements are slower. His body leans into mine like punctuation.

We stay like that for a while, awake but still. The day has begun, but it hasn’t taken shape. It waits—hollow in the places where their laughter usually lives.

Later, he wanders into his room and sits down beside the bin of LEGO bricks. He doesn’t build. “I don’t remember what we were playing before she left,” he whines. He runs his hand through the pieces as if listening for something in their texture. This is where they usually spent hours together—constructing, imagining, rebuilding. The baby crawls up beside him, watching. When he looks up, she claps, as if trying to conjure joy back into the space.

The quiet is not peace. It’s presence. It’s the echo of a person who matters. It’s the temporary ache of separation. It is, if I’m being honest, a kind of grief.

Not the kind that flattens you, but the kind that presses just enough to remind you that something real is missing. That something sacred is unfolding. She is growing, reaching outward, stepping more fully into herself. We knew this would come. We wanted this. Still, the house rearranges itself around her absence.

Shabbat meals feel especially altered. Her chair stays empty, but her presence lingers at the table. Songs begin, but her voice doesn’t join. There is a space where her laughter would be—a quiet that wraps around the edges of the day. Not sadness exactly, but tenderness. Reverence. A noticing that she is gone and still here, all at once. There is a gentle tug-of-war between the joy of imagining her experiencing Shabbat in a new way—surrounded by friends, singing different melodies, stepping into her own rhythms—and the ache of missing her at ours. We want this for her -and still, we want her here.

We scroll through the camp photos they post, scanning for glimpses. She’s not a “picture kid.” We knew that. Still, we look. A flash of movement. A pink sock. A shadow at the edge of the frame. We’re not looking for proof she’s okay—we know she is. We’re just reaching. Following the thread. Hoping to see her joy with our own eyes, even from far away.

On the Fourth of July, they posted an overhead video of the celebrations—kids running, dancing, weaving in and out of view. I watched it twice, slowly. And then I saw her. Walking hand in hand with a friend through the crowd. Just a few seconds, no close-up. Still, unmistakably her. It was the first real sign we’d seen. Not posed, not curated—just a sliver of her life unfolding in real time. The image stayed with me. A small, moving reminder that she is there, immersed in something all her own.

We know she is well taken care of. We know she is surrounded by good people. We know she is expanding, stretching into new spaces within herself. We trust the unfolding. We trust the process. Still, trust doesn’t cancel longing. It lives beside it.

Whenever I lament over missing her, my husband reminds me, “It’s supposed to be hard for us. That’s the point.”

He’s right. I know he is - and yet, the ache lives in the lining of my heart. This ache isn’t failure. It’s the cost of loving well. She is doing exactly what she was meant to do—stepping away with confidence, discovering who she is when no one is watching too closely. And we are doing what we were meant to do—learning to love from a distance, with open hands and steady hearts.

Parenting doesn’t contract as they grow. It deepens. The shape of it changes, less immediate, less visible, but no less powerful. It becomes quieter, more spacious, more rooted in trust than in proximity. It is no longer about tying shoes and fastening seatbelts, but about holding space for a child who is becoming a person with their own pace, their own pull, their own way of moving through the world.

It asks us to believe that what we’ve poured into them: the stories we told at bedtime, the blessings we whispered before meals, the way we said thank you or offered comfort or took responsibility; will live on inside them, woven so deeply into their way of being that they carry it forward without even realizing. It asks us to trust that the values we taught them - not just in words, but in how we showed up for others, how we listened, how we loved - have taken root, even if we don’t always get to see the bloom.

We no longer walk beside them every step. We don’t get to narrate the moment, or suggest a better reaction, or interpret their feelings as they unfold. What we get instead is something more tender and more mysterious: the hope that they will draw from the well we’ve spent years filling. That in a moment of confusion, they will pause and breathe. That in a moment of conflict, they will remember how we spoke about repair. That in a moment of choice, they will feel the imprint of what we’ve modeled.

When they don’t - because of course they won’t always - we are asked to meet them not with fear or shame, but with curiosity, with compassion, with the quiet strength of a presence that says: I trust you to try again.

As they enter the wide and wondrous terrain of pre-adolescence and adolescence, the separation can feel like a tear. Sometimes it is quiet: a closed door, a shrug, a sudden need for solitude. Sometimes it is loud: a challenge, a bold no, a testing of the ground between us. This is the work of becoming. And even when it stings, even when it startles, it is still holy. To separate from us is not to abandon us. It is to become more fully themselves.

Parenting growing children is its own kind of prayer. A practice of surrender. A daily act of release. It asks us to remain steady while they pull away, to stay present even when they do not turn back. It invites us to wait at the edge—not with fear, but with faith. Not grasping, but open. Ready to welcome whatever returns. This is the invisible work. It is the long view. The patient stretch. The sacred, daily practice of loving from just far enough away that they can become who they’re meant to be, while knowing, without a doubt, that they are never alone.

This, too, is love.
This, too, is parenting.

Still, I wonder how the rhythm will return. Whether the quiet will soften. Whether her brother will find new ways to play, new ways to shine in her temporary absence. Whether we, too, will find joy in this version of summer, one that holds her in memory while leaving room for something new to unfold. I hope we will. I think we might.

So I write.

Not because I expect an answer. Not because she needs to hear from us every other day.
I write because this is the thread I still hold.
I write because love lives here too—in the waiting, the wondering, the wide open space.

We love you.
We miss you.
You are doing great.
And when you’re ready, we’re here.