Family Camp

Ok, so Family Camp.

I just went, for the third year, on a family vacation.  A very specific and special family vacation.  “Andy” came this year, which made it extra awesome, and also my dad and step mom, sister and step sister, and their husbands and children.  We roll into this place eight adults deep, towing five children.  It’s pretty epic.  

<3 Family Camp <3

But not compared to the basic essence of what this place is.

Family Camp is actually called The Tyler Place.  It is in nowhere Vermont (sorry, people of Swanton), on Lake Champlain- which means you look across the water at Canada.  For those of you who are not millennials, I can describe it as the no kidding, dead-for-real inspiration for Dirty Dancing.  For the culturally stunted amongst us 

This picture should need no caption.

who do not know that movie, I can direct you to Netflix.  When you search for it there, Netflix will come up with Magic Mike, which is an excellent movie about the bonds of adult male friendship, but not at all related to Dirty Dancing.  So next step, probably Amazon, go watch it immediately, I’ll wait.

For the rest of you—no kidding.  Dirty Dancing. Hopefully with less heartbreak but honestly I don’t know the interior world of all the staff.  Like, your kids spend a week at summer camp…and so do you, but without your kids.  I mean not in a creepy way, you get them some, but they are off in the morning and the evening at their camps having the time of their lives doing archery and kayaking 

Pirate night for adults happens on the
champagne cruise. 
You know who you are, pirates.

and having pajama night or pirate night, while you are having a perfectly civilized time with other adults, also doing archery or kayaking or having pajama night, but with happy hour with yummy hors d’oevres.  The child care at TP is excellent, and the short people are having the best week of their lives, so you have no guilt about marathon napping or having adult conversations or, if you are my family, pursuing high stakes smack talking blood sports like frisbee golf and put-put.  All of those options and more are built into this idyllic space, where you get to do camp like adults want to—either inside with a book on the couch, or learning to sail, or at the bar, or arts and crafts, or whatever.  It is the perfect place for, in our case, three generations to all have a great vacation going at their own speed for an entire stress free week. 

At night, they have adult activities like trivia or jazz night or dance party night, and at the front desk you can get a babysitter for a reasonable hourly rate that they have vetted and trained.  (If you're reading, Sydney, we miss you!)

I don’t have kids, so for me, this means I get to be around my fam when they aren’t stressed about their kids (or scheduling…or meals…), and I don’t have to aunt with any more ambition than I’m feeling at any given moment.  I mean, if you’re feeling the pool, go with them to the pool—but if you’re not, the kids are having an incredible time anyway.  
(In previous years, without kids or a buffer plus-one, it also meant getting to sit alone at the bar and have a woman who’s name you don’t know tell you you should hurry up and just get pregnant, and don’t worry about “Andy,” you’ll always love your kid more than him anyway.  Family Camp is strange without kids.)

The food is problematically good.  Every day—every meal you’re like, this time I’ll reign it in, and then they bring out the pork tenderloin and the salted caramel 
fountain, and your resolve crumbles like the perfect crust on the Vermont maple cream pie.  

Lobster night, people.

It’s amazing.

It turns out, Tyler Place was started by the Wristens and the Tylers, until there was an unfortunate incident and the Wristens are heard of no more.  I have surmised this from the sign bragging over the lovely bar (kids are not allowed in the bar area, just fyi) that dates from the original camp, naming it “The Tyler and Wristen Place”.  

No spoilers, Reader, I'm in season 1.

As it is now just the Tyler Place, the only fair assumption to make is that some Westworld style Arnold smack went down years ago.  So that’s probably true.  (If you want to learn more, there is a tour you can sign up for.)

Also involved in the founding of the place was definitely Snow White, because the woodland creatures are all in for giving you the full escape-from-reality experience.  There are bunnies and fatfaces everywhere, being super adorable and probably making

Fat Face!!!!

your beds and leaving you those sweet folded-towel-animals you get when you’re out of the rooms.  

Go forth...and make the world beautiful!

The birds chirp at a level that wakes me up because I set my phone to sound like birds in the morning so I’m trained for that noise to wake me up.  They are offended by that very premise, and with great gusto proved to me that there’s nothing like the real thing.  (If you want to learn more, there is a birdwatching activity you can sign up for.)

The internet at TP is garbage, which sounds terrible but is wonderful.  I mean it’s there.  It just takes long enough for anything to load that if it’s not mission critical, you let it go.  This is good because then you don’t have to deal with crap like the Space Force and child concentration camps while you’re trying to remind yourself what good is left in the world.  (Down side, all that hits you real hard in the gut when you get back, and the diet-and-exercise plan you formed when eating everything in sight turns into a drinking-alone-and-calling-your-senators plan.) 

omg omg omg omg

...transition through adorable sloth baby...

There is but one TV at Tyler Place, back behind the bar, but I posit a challenge for any future TPers to find and map every hammock.  They are many.  Finding them would be a joy, but the quest will be arduous because you will want to nap on all of them, the day is only so long, and no one wants to miss one of those perfect meals.  

But what if insteeeaaaad
we put together a business plan?

(How do they get buffet style meats AND veggies cooked to perfection?  Answer: Witchcraft.  Snow White must have worked it out with her step mom and they came up with a baller retirement gig.)

I am into the arts and the crafts so I not only sign up for every scheduled opportunity to partake, but also raid the arts and crafts building as though I am allowed to and steal stuff to entertain myself while whiling away my lazy hours.  I mean, it’s not camp if you don’t make friendship bracelets and key chains.  But the art lady, she is amazing.  Cool, calm, (tolerant of theft,) competent with adults and with children, laid back and fun and a gift to humanity.  Also super-appreciated during scheduled arts and crafts time is my step mom, who signed her and me and all the kids up for 

I'm sure it's fine.

the family slot as though we were all in it together and was very forgiving when I was like, cool, you got these crazy, over-tired kids and their paint?  Cuz Ima make some shrinky-dinks soooo…. (if you are interested in calmer, less messy creativity, there are adults-only arts and crafts activities you can sign up for.)

The Cruise Directors and bar staff are perfect.  They are fun, and kind, and funny, and nice to you when you are a weird 38 year old without kids to get up for in the morning so you’re alone at the bar listening to strangers tell you to get knocked up.  They remember the drink you liked from two years ago and make it for you.  They tolerate your attempts at friendship and remember your name when they are holding 150 new names in their head every week.  They give you awards for your performance at the lip sync 

Did everyone not bring their space suit?

section of trivia night (that’s a thing) which you absolutely didn’t even want to do it until you realized you could put on your space suit, which you totally brought, because everything is better in costuming, and then you just acted like a crazy person to the Beastie Boys Intergallactic. 

Thursday night is Dance Party night.  TP has this policy that the staff is totally allowed to hang out with the guests, it’s fine.  There’s no tipping, so if someone is talking to you it’s cuz they want to.  And Dance Party night is for them as much as for you (they are young, and locked in rural Vermont for a whole summer).  So us old farts roll in, and we still got it, right up until liiiiiiiike 9:30 and then most people are like, mm, but bed tho.  Meanwhile the staff slow rolls in all evening, dressed to the nines (again, they live at a camp all summer, there’s not a lot of opportunity to show out), and they rock it til the wheels fall off, then move it to the staff housing (because the wheels didn’t actually fall off, because they are young). 

But this particular dance party night, everyone got to experience what happens when my dad brings it.  I mean, he’s 74.  Had back surgery like 6 weeks ago, his second in two years.  Not a great heart.  Not recovering perfectly.  But just in case I ever though I could begin to forget where I came from, Dad TORE IT DOWN on the dance floor.   He went right up to the DJ and requested a song, and the 

This but MY DAD.

guy maybe wasn’t sure what he asked for (I am watching all of this avidly from the dance floor), so DJ looks something up and plays it on his head phones and hands them to Dad to confirm.  I will, for the rest of my life, have the image of my dad bobbing his head with half a DJ’s headphone pressed to his ear like a mfing professional, in a dark room full of shaking bodies and one of those multicolored spinning light things.  Handling it like he was born to rock.  

This is the image I held on to when I got on the plane home, dealing with my outsized anxiety—we can all just die horribly right now, but this image gives me comfort and lets me tell gravity to bring it.  (J/k gravity, respect, it’s just a blog, pls don’t ever actually bring it, but also my dad.)

Then his song came on, and my father led a whole dance circle.  

He wouldn’t tell us what he requested til it came on, then he jumps right up before anyone (me) recognizes “Shout” pumping through the speakers.  And the man shouted.  Lifted his hands up, and shouted.  Kicked his heels up, and shouted. (C’mon now.) When the song got a little bit softer now, my dad was the lowest one on the dance floor.  When it got a little bit louder now, he led the charge.  It was…magnificent.

Equally magnificent was taking the nieces on the lake, and watching them both go down the scariest water slide out there.  They have, at Tyler Place, a death slide.  It’s like an old school 80’s playground slide, except on a floating raft, and also about 10 feet higher than the water.  It has a twist in it.  It is one of those common optical illusions of feats, that looks like nothing from the bottom (it’s not that far from the bottom of the slide to the water!  The top is not that high!) then you get up there and it’s like…..1,000 feet high, and moving in weird ways, because the base is on water.   And both those girls, at their tender ages of 7 and 4, handled it.  I mean they were terrified, but they both did it, and within 3 minutes were breathing normally again and were quite proud of themselves.  I’m almost sure no long-term damage was done.

“Andy” came on this trip, and got to actually spend low key, fun, quality time with my step mom, my dad, my sisters and brothers-in-law, and even the kids.  My oldest niece went from, “Here’s a funny joke, who is family and who is not?  IT’S YOU “ANDY”.  IT WILL ALWAYS BE YOU,” to “When are you going to marry him, I have spent my tiny 7 years wanting to be a flower girl, don’t screw this up for me.”  He picked me (sucker!) so he was already ready for the indelible family motto: If we are not mean to you it means we do not like you.   We haze in my family.  (Except my step mom, she’s the nice one.)  We talk smack.  We will stop if you can’t take it, but then we do not know if we can trust you.  And he did a very stand up job of taking it and dishing it back.  

Also he won put-put, and made it clear in archery that despite any previous impressions I may have given regarding skill sets, in the event of the total break down of society, he is in charge of catching dinner.  

He’s still not allowed on the roof though.  That would be ridiculous.  

(Also, in case you’re reading, “Andy”, neither of the cats count as dinner and you’ll have to arch for them too.)

Family Camp is not cheap, and irl I could never afford it—but my family has set up a scholarship program for me that allows me to go, because family.  (Thanks, y’all, if you’re reading!)  It is priceless time, getting to actually visit, getting to not lose your mind making dinner or worrying that the kids are entertained, getting to forge memories, getting to experience the good in the world.

FAMILY!!!

(Side Bar: I generally try and keep these posts light, and fun, and not centered on the terribleness of the world.  But it would be cowardly and inhumane not to take a moment to at acknowledge the terrible things our government has been doing to children and families at our border.  I have too many feelings to really speak on this, but…moment of silence for the kids crying themselves to sleep tonight.  Everyone please please call, donate, act, and demand action to protect them.) 

Let us all be decent to one another.