A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned (here) that my daughter was away at camp. It was not the first week she’d been away; she’s had a busy summer so far, and she’s not yet done with it at this point. For a month, she was with her grandparents and attending a day-camp theatre program. When I noted she was away, she was in the first of two weeks at Girl Scout camp in central Texas. As I write this, she’s in another day-camp theatre program (although it’s closer to home, so that she’s with her mother and me at night), and she’s got a week-long day-camp cheer program coming up soon. (Nor yet is it a summer-only thing; come the fall, she’s going to be on her school’s student council, as well as taking up the tuba–yes, tuba–and continuing in her cheer program and yet another theatre program, in the last of which she will be exploring costuming and related work.)

It is, admittedly, a lot. I was not nearly so active at her age as she is now; my own summers then were taken up with household chores and more reading than was likely good for me, at least until I got big enough that I could actually begin to do some work and earn some money helping my great uncle on electrical jobs. Too, I was not an only child as my daughter is; it’s easier to provide so much for one child than it is for two. There were other factors, too, the details of which I will omit here, thank you kindly; it will suffice to say that matters were otherwise then than they are now, and not only in the differences in personality between my daughter and me.

Such differences do have a lot to do with my daughter being so much more engaged in the world than I was (and, it might well be argued, still am). She’s always been far more outgoing than I was at her age (I return to the phrasing again and again because it really is not fair to compare a forty-something man to a girl roughly a quarter his age), and I’ve made a point of reinforcing that behavior with her. She’s far more pleasant to be around than I was, certainly, less apt to point out how those around her are in error when it doesn’t actually make a difference to how things are going, less determined to prove she’s the smartest person in the room in every room she’s in. (It didn’t work out well for me.)

Instead, my daughter is open to new experiences and people, willing to do things other than her normal routines (although she would like to sleep in more than a lot of things allow). She, by inclination and training, makes a point of thanking those with whom she works for taking the time to work with her, and she continues to approach activities with enthusiasm and a joy that I find refreshing to see in the world. Certainly, I am biased (how could I not be?), and certainly, I approach all of this from several positions of privilege (I’m even aware of some of them, although I acknowledge there may well be others of which I am not immediately cognizant). But I think I have some reason to be so; I am and remain pleased with my daughter, and I look forward to seeing how she continues on through the summer and beyond it.

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