Dear Henry

Jack has been at camp for almost one month. We are going up to Massachusetts to pick him up on Sunday.

Remember how I said how psyched Jack was to be at camp. Well it turns out to have been a pretty uneven month for big Jack. We got contacted by the camp right before the Fourth of July - which was almost the halfway point. They said your little brother was incredibly sad and wanted to come home. Normally, kids get homesick for a little while and then get over it. The interesting thing is the camp folks thought he wasn't going to get over it. Wow, that was a bit of a shocker for us.

So we had a tough decision. Mom and I talked about it and agreed there were a lot of reasons why he should stay.

-His sadness might be temporary
-He looks forward to going to camp all year
-He is with his really good life-long friends up there
-Camp is totally fun
-If he came home he might miss it and regret leaving
-If he came home all he'd have waiting for him is a couch, TV, computer and a whole lot of nothing... boring
-He might learn something important by doing something hard - by sticking it out



We also looked at some of these pictures of Jack among all the photos the camp posts on its website. His smiles told us that there were definitely times he was enjoying himself.

We told the camp that we thought Jack should stay until the end.

On July 4th or 5th, Mom called back to check how Jack was doing. The person she talked to there told her Jack had a really good night the night before. There was a Ga-Ga tournament (did you ever play Ga-Ga - great game - Israeli bomb shelter dodgeball) and it wound up being Jack pitted against a counselor after everyone else was eliminated. All the campers were chanting, "Jack, Jack, Jack." As you can imagine, that gave him a real boost. He seemed to get past the sadness and start enjoying the experience.

I am interested to hear what he has to say on our trip back home. I home he actually did turn it around, and that he isn't too mad at me and Mom. We'll see, we'll see. I'll report back.