The morning was not like a summer one but more like an Elul one. Misty and cool air filled with the feeling that carries the potential of change.

We were heading up for the bus that would take my daughter to her first day of camp.

Not her first year actually the fifth but still the first day.

What I find most interesting about new starts is the opportunity for change to measure how much we’ve changed or how much life has changed us from who we were the year before.

How we walk the same exact paths but in completely different ways.

Other years we ran or rushed and worried. Always a last-minute detail forgotten or a shoelace broken. A sunhat one year a water bottle the next. Some kind of surrounding panic that would make the experience have more sensation. Or maybe it was that we subconsciously believed more action equals more value.

This time was different.

I let go.

What would be would be what wouldn’t wouldn’t. And anyway that’s how it went every year even with all the effort and rushing. And worrying. Did I send enough food drink sunscreen? Will she use it? Which group will she be in? Will she like it?

This year I say to her “We’re just going to take it slow make the best of what and who and how much.”

We walk slowly up the hill to the bus stop. 

No one is there. 

This means one of two things: One we missed the bus or two no other girls this year will be getting the camp bus at this stop.

We sit for a while at least in the shade. 

As we sit I think about a story I once read about a Jewish boy who needed to escape from Iran. Before he left his mother taught him how to use a needle and thread so he would know how to sew. This is what she felt he could carry with him or would need for his journey. If I remember correctly he became a tailor or in some other way the needle and thread were exactly what he needed. His mother probably wanted to send it all with him. Fresh milk and fresh bread for the whole trip. But there is only so much that lasts.

I once saw an exhibit of a set of small canvas knapsacks used by a family escaping war-torn Europe. Those small bags said everything.

After sitting for 40 minutes we surmise that we missed the bus.

Usually I take all the numbers with me frantically calling the bus to find out exactly where it is. But this year I forgot.

Calmly we call a taxi.

The taxi drives backwards down the one-way street. He’s in a rush. He also doesn’t want all our small change when we pay. “But that’s what we have” I say.

This year’s journey I am beginning to notice is about “what you have you have and what you don’t you don’t.”

The driver accepts the small change. I imagine he’ll need it later anyway. But I could see that he was young new in the process of understanding that what you get is what you need.

As my daughter gets out of the taxi and waves goodbye I notice how this year her pack is not overstuffed like in other years. I was always in awe of those whose bags looked slightly deflated.

This year I note how I sent the minimum as opposed to stuffing it with all that “just in case” stuff.

This year I left space for trust and faith.

Trust that my daughter could manage — and faith that G-d would help.

There comes that time when they have to handle the “just in cases” in their own way.

I guess there’s no more stuffing the bag.