I love traveling. There is nothing better than visiting a city I have never been to and poking around seldom-trod and colorful sites, restaurants, museums, attractions and trails.
But I live in Southern California. You would think that summers with my son would be chock-full of adventure. Not so much. Instead, I found myself staying home and complaining about soul-sucking traffic, high prices, and the fact that my husband works outside of the house and couldn’t venture with us.
Plus, I’ll be honest: I take my hometown for granted. Why would I spend a hot summer day on the 405 when I can walk my kid to the community pool?
A few years ago, however, I stumbled on a little miracle that changed my mind.
My son, Nicholas, begged me to go to the summer day camp at the school he attends. His friends were enrolled, and he couldn’t stop telling me about how much fun they had.
I needed the day care a few days a week, so I signed him up. While the schedule was full of the normal activities that I expected from any camp, it was the variety and number of field trips that caught my eye.
These weren’t run-of-the-mill field trips, either. The kids were scheduled to go places I would never dream of driving to on a weekday in Southern California: the California Science Center, the San Diego Zoo, art museums, Native American ruins, the La Brea Tar Pits and Universal Studios.
Since the camp was bringing a busload of kids, the price I was paying to send my son was far less than the child’s ticket price I would have normally paid. Even better – he was going with all of his friends.
As the traffic-hating mother of an only child, it was a little gift from heaven. It gave him social interaction and cultural exposure, and allowed him to be a tourist in Southern California.
A few weeks into summer, my 10-year-old son was far more well-traveled and acculturated to Southern California than I ever was at his age.
He really understood California history – not just because he had read about it in a book – but because he had seen it, touched it, dug up some of it, and scraped the remaining tar off the sole of his shoes.
He knew how big the space shuttle was because he stood next to it. He was learning to understand art because he experienced it up close.
And he almost missed all of that because I was so busy complaining about the freeway. I won’t let that happen again.
Thank you, day camp. From now on, I’m driving.
