By KEVIN POTTINGER
For The Beachcomber

My right foot works the brake pedal like a kick drum in a polka band. The wheel feels sticky under my hands as our minivan plows through clouds of dun-colored dust on the narrow gravel road. We’re 20 minutes late picking up our oldest boy from summer camp.

I got lost after I impatiently skimmed the complex directions, free-associating an improvised route while my wife Maria stared out the window, her hands folded in her lap, a model of inscrutable serenity. I am the thing she cannot change, the reason she needs courage to change the things she can and the wisdom to know the difference, because obviously I have neither.

Speeding along the now-familiar rutted gravel road to camp, we encounter the same grinning young man in a red T-shirt bounding from the underbrush like a pop-up marksmen’s target, pointing us toward the same clearing with the same 40 cars splayed like pick-up-sticks across a haphazardly mowed field.

The earnest and cheerful camp counselors with Hi! nametags and clipboards who had assigned our shy camper a cabin and checked his head for lice last week welcome us like out-of-town relatives on our return. I’d bet the kids that 60 percent of the camp counselors would have neatly-trimmed goatees. I lost the bet, even if you counted only the men. They check our name off the list and wave us on.

We tiptoe inside a modern glass and clear-fir gathering hall where the closing ceremony has already begun, gingerly latching the heavy door behind us with a muted metallic clunk. We push our pig-pile of kids toward the gaggle of other late-arrivals shushing small children in exaggerated panto-mime. The campers are lined up on rows of wooden benches, an ocean of identical fidgeting blue T-shirts.

A slide show of campers in candid poses plays on a retractable screen, accompanied by a recording of a sincere-sounding young singer delicately finger-picking a guitar. He sings like he probably has a goatee.

We comb the benches for our son and discover his blond head bobbing on the waves of blue shirts near the front. I didn’t realize how much I had missed him. I wave hesitantly, not sure that he sees us across the expansive auditorium. The song is making me cry. I think it’s about growing up.

The sea of blue T-shirts suddenly ignites like a fistful of bottle rockets, laughing and wooting derisively at a private joke displayed on the screen — a boy with his cheeks crammed full of dessert, crumbs of yellow cake falling from tightly pursed lips.

Our camper stands momentarily in the projector’s glare, then stoops self-consciously as he works his way past 30 pairs of summer-scarred knees to join us by the doors. His siblings circle around him; Maria and I hug him in turn. Several more slides follow: a counselor mobbed by a squad of muddy-wet campers, kids reading quietly in their bunks.

A cherubic camp director intones a few benevolent closing words, then from the back of the room several counselors with campfire guitars conga-line to the front, climb on tables and count off a shout-along song set to the tune of “Brown-Eyed Girl.”

The room explodes into a writhing mass of blue T-shirts. At each chorus the campers yell as loud as they can, their voices blending into a single distorted yowl in the reverberating glass and polished-concrete hall.

Eventually the song collapses into chaos; the hysteria sputters and finally fades. The kids turn to each other soberly and say their goodbyes. Maria signs a form, returning our camper to our custody.

In the car, we learn that he didn’t sleep very much. He’s shouted himself hoarse. Yet he’s different. He takes time to explain himself. He’s polite.

Halfway home, we stop to shop for school supplies. The kids begin the arduous task of touching every single item in the vast Fred Meyer. Maria hands out photocopied lists and the kids load up shopping carts with glue sticks, packs of multicolored Sharpies, protractors, boxes of jet-black Ticonderoga pencils, backpacks.

As I bend down to begin unloading a cart onto the conveyor belt at checkout, rolling past my eyes are a set of lawn darts, two dozen powdered donuts, Barbie’s Fashonista Ultimate Closet, an iPad.

Our oldest boy and I push the wobbly shopping carts into the afternoon sun. It seems like summer might never end. But it seems like the endless summer days of his childhood are already coming to a close.

— Kevin Pottinger and his wife Maria live on Vashon wth their four children.