I expected my daughter to come home from summer camp with endless stories, new friendships, and a suitcase full of dirty clothes.
Instead, she came home carrying a silence I couldn’t understand.
That summer, the laundry basket sat between me and the television as I folded Kathleen’s clean camp clothes into three neat piles on the couch.
T-shirts.
Shorts.
And the one hoodie she had insisted on packing even though the forecast had called for temperatures around 80 degrees for two straight weeks.
At 35, I had folded a lot of my daughter’s clothes.
It never got old.
Every neatly folded stack felt like proof that, despite everything, I was doing okay raising her on my own.
“Mom, are you even listening?”
I smiled.
“I am listening. You said archery, canoeing, and the night hike.”
“And the talent show,” Kathleen said. “And Brenda says there’s a real campfire. Not the fake gas kind.”
Brenda was one of Kathleen’s closest friends.
I glanced over my shoulder.
Kathleen was sitting on the kitchen counter, swinging her feet against the cabinet despite the fact that I’d asked her not to do that approximately a thousand times.
Her beloved sketchbook was open on her lap.
She carried that beat-up hardcover everywhere.
She was thirteen and had the kind of personality that filled every room she entered. She talked constantly about school, made friends easily, and usually told me every tiny detail about her day.
Now she was practically glowing as she counted down the days until camp.
“Two weeks is a long time, Kath.”
“Two weeks is nothing,” she argued. “You always say that when you go on work trips.”
“That’s different.”
“Well, I’ll be back in no time, just like you.”
She rolled her eyes at me with the kind of affection only a teenager can manage.
“Mom. It’s camp. Everyone’s going.”
I set down the shirt I was folding.
“Everyone, including Brenda?”
“Obviously. And Maya.”
“Maya?”
“I saved her a seat on the bus so she wouldn’t feel left out again. You know how she gets.”
I nodded.
I did know.
For the past two months, Kathleen had been the one pulling a girl named Maya into group photos, inviting her to sit at lunch, and making sure she was included in birthday plans.
That was the part of my daughter that never worried me.
She had a good heart.
But then Kathleen’s expression changed slightly.
“Brenda’s been kind of weird lately, though.”
She flipped her pencil between her fingers.
“About who sits where. But whatever.”
I looked at her.
“Is that something I should be concerned about?”
“No, Mom. It’s nothing.”
She shrugged.
“Just girl stuff.”
I let it go.
Girls her age seemed to exist inside their own weather system. One day the sun was shining, and the next, a friendship could collapse because somebody sat at the wrong lunch table.
The camp counselors had been vetted.
Her best friends were going.
Kathleen was responsible.
So I convinced myself everything would be fine.
“You promise you’ll text me?”
“Every day.”
“Every other day is fine.”
“Mom.”
Kathleen hopped down from the counter and walked over to me.
She stood close enough that I could smell her strawberry shampoo.
“I’ll be okay.”
“I know you will.”
“Then why are you refolding the same shirt?”
I looked down.
She was right.
I was, in fact, refolding the same shirt.
“Because I’m your mother,” I said. “And that’s my job.”
She laughed.
That big, open laugh that used to fill our entire apartment when she was five.
Then she leaned her head against my shoulder for a second.
“Can I bring the sketchbook?”
“Of course.”
She grinned and disappeared down the hallway to finish packing.
I sat there holding the hoodie and wondered how a person could grow from a tiny baby into a thirteen-year-old who thought about saving seats for lonely classmates.
The morning the bus left, I stood in the school parking lot holding a paper cup of coffee I never drank.
Kathleen hugged me hard and then ran off with Brenda before I could say anything embarrassing.
