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The first time my son went to sleepaway camp he was 10 years old. We flew to New York to meet his cousins, who had been going to the same camp for several years and were excited to have their “baby cousin” join them. 

My son was excited, thrilled – and nervous. When he saw his cousins at the airport, hanging out with their “camp” friends, he moved slowly toward them, not wanting to intrude. He needn’t have worried; his cousin Erica swooped in to hug him, and barely let him leave her side.

The next four weeks went by as slowly as clouds move across a summer sky. I received one letter from my son – five sentences, actually – “Camp’s great. I’m great. Food’s fine. Learned to play poker. Love you.”

Twenty-eight days later, I flew back to Newark to retrieve my son. As soon as he got off the bus and saw me in the airport, he ran into my arms and asked if he could have McDonald’s. I laughed and nodded – I had missed him so much! He could have had just about anything.

My son, who is not exactly the bubbly type, talked non-stop for the next hour. He told me about his bulls-eye in archery; he described all 15 ceramic superheroes he created; he told me he had climbed the rock wall and zipped down the zip line. He said he went to the dance and wore his pink polo shirt and that the girls thought it was cool. He even asked a girl to dance and she said yes.

Ahh. Summer camp.

I sat listening, smiling, staring at my boy who had been gone from my life for the first time ever. His dad and I had been divorced about a year by then, and with no one at home but me, I had felt un-tethered. My son grounded me – he still does – and although I work full time, have a wonderful circle of friends and more invitations than I can accept, I love knowing that my relationship with and responsibility to my son are more important than anything else I do.

I was surprised by my son’s animated conversation, as if telling me made it even better than when it happened. And then, as if on a timer, my son’s storytelling winded down. He stopped talking and laid his head on my lap. He let out a sigh and said he didn’t feel so good. I felt his head and he was burning up; in minutes he had drifted off to sleep.

I thought to myself, “He just needs a little TLC. Then he’ll be okay.” And I remember thinking, “Maybe this is what ‘homesick’ really means.”

As it turns out, our flight was delayed 8 hours and I couldn’t move because my son stayed asleep in my lap. When they began boarding our flight, I gently shook my son awake and he was himself again. We flew home on peanuts and 7-Up.

Today, nearly five years and half-a-lifetime of maturity later, my son arrived home from two weeks in Israel. I had missed him more than I even thought I would; I had again felt un-grounded. But I reveled in the pictures sent via email –  Jake covered in mud from the Dead Sea; wrapped in Tefillah at the Wailing Wall; happily carefree with his arms slung around the shoulders of his best friends.

When we got home, his animated coverage of the trip lasted about thirty minutes, and then he announced he was exhausted. When I felt his forehead, sure enough, it was burning up. This may be only the third or fourth fever he’s had since that detainment in Newark, but it was just as real. Before I knew it, my son laid down on the couch – his long legs dangling over the edge – and put his head in my lap. I stroked his hair and thought, as I did so many years ago, “All he needs is a little TLC.” (And about two days of sleep.)

As he began to snore lightly, I thought that these days would soon be over. In just four years, he’d be coming home from college, probably with a girlfriend in tow. “Homesick” – no matter how you define it – would be a thing of the past, as he’d be making a new home (or several) at school, then wherever he decided to strike out on his own. He might want some occasional TLC from his mom -- or a load of laundry washed -- but I doubted that, in a few years, he’d lay his head in my lap and let me rub his back.

And that’s really the cycle of life, isn’t it? The “roots and wings” we offer our children as they grow from childhood into adulthood?  Someday, if he’s fortunate, my son will have children of his own. They’ll go on their own childhood adventures, come home to tell their own stories, and if my son is really, really, lucky, his kids will lay their heads in his lap and fall asleep.

And maybe as he pets them and soothes them, he’ll remember what it’s like to be on the other end of this kind of love. The kind of love that saved Harry Potter; the kind of love that cures homesickness; the kind of love that gives us roots … and wings.