"Ten is double digits," Maya told us one night in April, "so I think I can sleep in the camper without grown-ups." She had obviously practiced it. Dana and I looked at each other across the kitchen, and that's how her birthday got planned.
Maya turned 10 on Friday, May 22, which was a school day, so the party was Saturday night. Four friends from her fourth-grade class, the pop-up opened up in the side yard where it lives between the mango tree and the fence, and a firm lights-out at 10 p.m. You can probably guess how firm.
Setting up for five girls
Last year's birthday was six third graders in the dome tent in the backyard. This year Maya wanted the camper, and the beds worked out: two girls on the king end, two on the queen end (Maya's end, with its own curtain) and the dinette made up as a bed for the fifth. Each girl brought a sleeping bag and pillow. Dana put a glow stick and a granola bar on every pillow, along with a card of rules that Maya helped write:
- Nobody leaves the side yard without telling a grown-up.
- Bathroom trips go through the patio door, which stays unlocked with the light on.
- Lights out at 10. Talking allowed. Quietly.
- Nobody touches the crank handle.
We plugged the camper into the patio outlet with our 30-to-15-amp adapter, which runs the lights but not the roof AC. I learned that the hard way in March. Saturday was still 79 degrees at 10 p.m. with a dew point around 72, so the Ryobi clamp fan went over the queen end, the bridge fan hung over the king end, and the little USB clip fan sat on the dinette running off the Jackery. Three fans, five girls, one low hum.
Dana also found Nico's old baby monitor in the hall closet and set it on the dinette. The girls discovered it within five minutes and said goodnight to it, individually, several times over the course of the night.
The night itself
Drop-off was 5:30. Dinner was pie-iron pizza pockets at the backyard fire pit: bread, sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni pressed in our two Rome pie irons. With five girls and two irons, dinner took an hour, which turned out to be an activity on its own. Nico was the kindling manager for the evening, and he presented each stick to me like it belonged in a museum.
Dana made the cake, a sea turtle with a shell of green frosting and chocolate chips for scales, because when you're ten and planning to be a marine biologist, the theme picks itself.
After dark the girls discovered something I'd never have thought of. With the battery lantern on inside, the canvas bed ends glow like a movie screen. They put on a shadow puppet show for an audience of me, Dana, Nico and, briefly, Pickles at the patio door. There was a rabbit, a dragon and a long scene about a substitute teacher that I gather was based on real events. Nico laughed until he had to sit down in the grass.
Nico went inside at 9, under protest. He'd been told weeks ago that the guest list was Maya's, and he accepted it the way six-year-olds accept things, by bringing it up every hour. Lights-out was 10:00. At 10:20 there was giggling. At 11 there was a ghost story about someone's grandmother's house that I could hear clearly through the canvas from the patio. At 11:40 one girl came in to use the bathroom, met Pickles in the dark kitchen and screamed loud enough to wake Nico. Pickles was unharmed. By midnight the camper was quiet, and the last thing I heard on the baby monitor was the fans.
The mockingbird that woke last year's group at 6 a.m. either slept in or lost to the fans. The girls surfaced at 8:15, and I had the Blackstone going on the patio by then. Fourteen pancakes at a time turned out to be the right number for five ten-year-olds, if not for the one who wanted hers shaped like a sea turtle. I tried. It looked like a potato. She ate it anyway.
What I'd do differently
- Put a night-light in the kitchen, and warn every guest about the orange cat who likes to sit in the dark.
- Set lights-out for 10:30, and count it as a win if the camper goes quiet by 11:30.
- Give Nico his own plan. He's been promised a dome-tent night in the backyard with me this summer, just the two of us, and he has already written it on the calendar on the fridge.
It doesn't count in my camp math. The pop-up's nights are for trips, and this one never left the yard. But if you ask Maya, it's the best night the camper has had so far.
When the last parent pulled away on Sunday, she climbed back into the queen end by herself, drew the curtain and slept for two hours in the middle of the afternoon. Ten, it turns out, is tiring.
