On Sunday we dropped the Lone Star Girl off at Girl Scout camp for a week to learn how to be a CIT (Counselor-In-Training). Unlike the forty-minutes-away Camp Greenhill, where she spent a few week-long summer sessions when she was younger, this camp is about three hours away. She has been there before for weekend camps, but only with the whole troop, including me or her former troop leader. Also unlike those pre-adolescent sessions, she now has anaphylactic allergies and asthma to consider. Letting her do stuff like this is a whole lot scarier now, and it is pretty impossible to know exactly how ready someone is for how much responsibility when you throw in a condition like hers. I know she will have to deal with all of these things on her own as an adult, so I know she needs practice, but you really don't want to make a mistake on the timing of the responsibilities when the stakes are so high.
That said, I trust the Girl Scout camp staff more than anyone (besides the allergist) when it comes to these matters. They have shown a level of awareness and a willingness to take things seriously and Be Prepared that far outshines my experiences with anyone else at all, including family members with medical backgrounds. I know they have covered all that can be covered. As I handed over gobs of medicine and explained procedures at check-in, they were all like "Bye, Mom". Firmly. They already had it under control. I think we were out of there in under 20 minutes.
I miss my Girl but I expect she's having lots of fun. Her sister and I have each sent her three letters and we will travel to collect her on Saturday.
I know these next four years are going to be, even more than the years that came before, an endless stream of practicing-being-on-her-own experiences so that she's ready to take on the world on her own terms by the end of high school. It's terrifying and heart-wrenching and beautiful.
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