For One Glorious Weekend, Mothers Get Their Hearts’ Desires: Junk Food and Peace and Quiet

Hi: Camp is fun.

I’ve made lots of new friends.

We ate tostadas and toasted marshmallows .

We made boo-boo bunnies out of washcloths.

Love, Mom

It was group photo time. Camp director Carol Smith-Carter shepherded her happy campers into rows and, just before the camera clicked, shouted “One-two-three--laundry!” The campers answered with a chorus of boos.

This was Mother’s Camp and Mother’s Camp is not about doing laundry or planning meals or washing dishes.

It is, rather, what Smith-Carter calls “a three-day getaway for moms,” a respite from car pools and sibling squabbles and Little League. The brochure for Mother’s Camp says it all: “No cooking, no chores, no kids!”

If the dishwasher overflows (and it did), let it. Someone else will mop up. If the phone rings, let it. Someone else will answer. As assistant director Katie Plecity instructs the camper moms, “Live the way your kids normally would.”

Weekend activities include a spin around Big Bear Lake aboard a pontoon boat and a one-hour horseback ride along a mountain trail. (“Please, God, I’m the mother of three,” pleaded one novice rider who had drawn a particularly recalcitrant mare.)

Soaking in Bubble Bath

But for many campers, the real R&R; is the luxury of being totally self-indulgent in the knowledge that someone else is in charge at home. For Diane Solomon, a mother of three from Torrance, the ultimate camp experience was soaking in a bubble bath while sipping champagne and nibbling a chocolate.

Solomon’s husband, Bob, a contractor, had tucked a gift certificate for Mother’s Camp into her Christmas stocking.

Ellie Kenney, 43, of Moorpark, a single parent who is the mother of four children ranging in age from 8 to 15--as well as a part-time college instructor and a weekend emergency-room nurse--had only one agenda: “Rest is what I came for. I registered for the couch potato decathlon.”

This is not camp, as in tents and mosquitoes. These campers figure they’ve served their time as good scouts and mothers of scouts. Base camp is the Edgewater Motel at lake’s edge, where roughing it means rooms may not have remote-control television and telephones.

Campers make their own beds, but bed-making isn’t encouraged. Smith-Carter’s philosophy is, “If it absolutely drives you nuts, then throw the covers up.”

Said Janet Paulus, 38, of La Mesa in San Diego County, mother of two, full-time homemaker and partner in a home-based basket-weaving business: “The big thing this place has is no decisions. The biggest decision we’ve had to make was whether to go on boat 1 or boat 2.”

Cookie Johnson, the cook, was setting out the fixings for a Mexican supper. “Do you know how to make your own tostadas?” she asked the women. They did. Johnson smiled and said, “I figured this group would.”

Mother’s Camp is not a spa, and spa cuisine isn’t spoken here. Consider Friday’s dinner: Meatball shish kebabs, potato-cheese soup, corn muffins, spinach salad and homemade cheesecake. Comfort food.

“These women are eaters ,” observed Johnson, whose meal for 20 had been demolished by the 16 campers. For the first meal or two, campers wrestled with the urge to jump up and do the dishes.

For three days, Johnson’s kitchen produced down-home treats like pineapple upside-down cake, calories be hanged. And late at night, in Room 1, the penny-ante Tripoley players stoked up on illicit treats they’d brought to camp from the Price Club--institutional size packages of corn curls and nuts and chips.

Mija Anton, 33, a single parent from Costa Mesa, had come to camp straight from a health farm in Lancaster where she’d gone to drop a few pounds. She figured she’d just gained them back, but never mind, she’d be in shape for her planned climb of Mt. Whitney this summer.

Like kids playing hooky, campers permitted themselves such simple pleasures as reading romance novels in bed.

Karen Leboffe, 36, a homemaker and mother of three who came from the La Mesa area with her friends Janet Paulus and Dianne Tuohy, was typical of many campers: “Except for having other children, I’ve never been away” from the family. Paulus laughed and added, “Three days in the hospital just doesn’t do it.”

Mother’s Camp, Leboffe said, was her reward for having kept the children quiet and occupied while her husband, a community college biology teacher, wrote a textbook. “I’d never go anywhere by myself,” she said, “but this is safe.”

Twelve of the 16 campers came as a group, most of them from the San Fernando Valley, a loosely knit coalition of friends and acquaintances linked by having been together in running a co-op nursery school or having bowled in the same league or played on the same softball team.

For the most part, they are full-time homemakers, women who shepherd scout troops, who are school volunteers, and who ferry their children and those of classmates with working mothers to the big games. Mother’s Camp was founded, in part, on Smith-Carter’s belief that this endangered species is making a comeback.

She said: “The trend, it seems, is shifting back to motherhood. We thought, ‘Yeah, it’s time for this.’ ” And Smith-Carter, the mother of two daughters and a former newspaper advertising woman, knows, “These women are tired by the time they get here. I think women are realizing, ‘I really need a break. I do deserve this.’ They go back home and the family appreciates them more, and they appreciate the family more.”

Mother’s Camp runs on a schedule, sort of. Dinner may be served at 6, or it may appear sometime before 7. The point is that it doesn’t really matter. At this particular session, a mix-up at the Magic Mountain stables resulted in too many riders for too few horses.

Katie Plecity was unfazed. She covered the 5-mile trail on foot, keeping up with the riders while pointing out dwarf mistletoe and woodpecker holes and mountain flowers.

Plecity is a part-time camp director and a full-time concrete finisher in construction. “And like a lot of people in the mountains, I’m an artist,” she explained, “waiting to be discovered.” Meanwhile, she has been commissioned to paint two life-size bulls for a local meat market.

Several of the women reflected on the mix-up at the stable, noting with satisfaction, “Usually, as Mom, that’s the kind of hassle I have to handle.” Paulus agreed, “I got my money’s worth right there.”

Smith-Carter’s husband, Tim Carter, is the trouble-shooter who responds to SOSs from camp for firewood or marshmallows or maybe spare packets of toy eyes for the boo-boo bunnies that campers make during Sunday’s champagne brunch and crafts hour.

During one camp he fielded an emergency call for baking powder. But, through a comedy of errors, it was salt in a baking powder can that he delivered to the cake-baker. Puzzled, Smith-Carter wondered why none of the campers wanted their dessert.

“One mom was so worried about hurting our feelings that she actually ate it,” she said. “Another slipped it into a napkin,” then into the trash. A trick known to children since the whole rigmarole began.

Camp lore abounds. There was the time the gas line broke on the boat, leaving campers powerless and adrift in midlake. So what’s a mother to do? Improvise, of course. With a colorful parka tied to the tip of an oar, the women waved frantically until rescued by a passing boat.

And camp conversation? Well, it tends to revolve around home and kids and sex education in the schools and stretch marks.

At Sunday brunch, the final event, campers prepared for re-entry as they passed around the Target stores newspaper ad--maybe they could pick up some toilet tissue, or other sale item, on the way home.

For 2 1/2 days, most campers easily resisted any urge to call home. Donna Parker, 36, of Reseda, a one-day-a-week paper hanger and the mother of three, including an 18-year-old and an 18-month-old, sent flowers to her husband, Randy, who was taking care of the children. After all, it was their wedding anniversary.

Marianne Severtson, 41, a mother of four from Mission Hills, was glued to the television set--the Lakers vs. Phoenix. “When I signed up,” she explained, “I didn’t know it would be the first game of the series.”

But the other campers seemed quite happy not to have to watch sports on TV.

Shopping--that was another matter. The boutiques of Big Bear were a magnet, shoppers returning with--what else?--T-shirts and other souvenirs for their youngsters.

From time to time, campers would fantasize about leaving the big city forever and moving to a town like Big Bear (population 15,000), where their children could grow up seeing bald eagles instead of graffiti, where they might get away from crime and drugs and drinking and clothing with logos on every seam.

Mother’s Camp is about escape. But, as Paulus acknowledged, “I start to get nervous if I can’t get to a mall.”

Relaxing in the bubbling Jacuzzi at the local athletic club (a camp perk) with Tuohy, her partner in the basket-weaving enterprise, and Leboffe, she leaned back and said, “You know, the best part of being here is that we don’t have to worry about who’s cooking dinner.”

For Susan Gray, 42, a petite mother of two from Granada Hills, Mother’s Camp with its be-pampered policy was a double treat. She is a homemaker, a school volunteer--and she works outside the home as a housekeeper.

She had left her husband in charge at home, figuring, “If the kids are going to kill each other, they’ll kill each other. I’m not worried.” Then she laughed as she recalled the only other time she took a vacation from the family, about 10 years ago: “I was so glad to get home to my husband that two months later I was pregnant.”

Terri Swig, 35, a mother of two and part-time school aide from Moorpark, summed up the secret of Mother’s Camp: “There’s places to ride horses at home, places to play racquetball at home, but there’s just never time to do it.”

When she told her husband, Allen, she wanted to go to camp, she said, “His first reaction was, WHAT ? And my kids said, ‘You can’t go.’ ” But she knew, “They can handle themselves fine, as long as I’m not there. Going out the door is the tough part.”

Barbara Reichenbach, 38, a full-time homemaker and mother of two from Canyon Country, thought of Saturday at camp as a day off. At home, she said, “Saturdays are usually spent running one or both of the kids around.” She said: “Family’s real important to us. That’s why they don’t resent it when I take a little time off.”

Campers sipped champagne from plastic glasses and nibbled chocolate-dipped strawberries as their boat circled the lake. Popping a cork and tossing it into the water, Smith-Carter assured the group, “It’s biodegradable.”

But if anyone was feeling slightly giddy, it was from the freedom, not the alcohol. “We’re reverting back to our childhood,” one said. “We played kick-the-can on our way shopping, I mean, come on. . . .”

Around their “porta-bonfire,” they sang a round of “It Was Sad When the Great Ship Went Down.” The coat hangers on which they toasted marshmallows made someone think of Christina Crawford’s allegation in “Mommy Dearest” that Joan Crawford became hysterical if little Christina used wire hangers instead of padded hangers for her dresses.

“God,” Paulus said, “I’d be so thankful just to see clothes on hangers. . . .”

By Sunday noon, the craft hour, new friendships had been forged. Carefully rolling pastel washcloths to make boo-boo bunnies, campers had to make one of the heavy decisions of the weekend: What color ribbon to tie around their bunnies’ necks.

Several campers acknowledged feeling just a bit foolish. After all, hadn’t they taught little Bluebirds to make boo-boo bunnies? (For the uninitiated, a boo-boo bunny is designed to hold an ice cube to be applied as a cold pack to an injured child.)

Smith-Carter glanced around the roomful of women painstakingly crafting bunnies and observed, “Twenty years fighting for our rights, down the drain.”

Anton, who has made two parachute jumps, glued her bunny’s eyes into position and said, “Isn’t this exciting!”

There would be warm hugs all around before the campers started the long drive down the mountain.

Mother’s Camp is an idea that was born in 1982 when Smith-Carter, 39, a camp counselor during her college years, and a friend were filling out camp forms for their kids and decided, “There should be a camp for us. “

Three years ago, she and her family moved from Sierra Madre to Big Bear. After testing her concept with some “pioneer Moms,” she decided it was an idea whose time had come, and a year ago became a full-time camp director.

Every weekend, except holidays, Mother’s Camp hosts between 12 and 20-plus campers, each of whom pays $220, meals and all activities included, for a single room, $185 for a shared double (discounted for groups). Nothing is extra, except the optional in-room Swedish massage.

Day in and day out, “It seems moms still put themselves at the bottom of the list,” Smith-Carter said. “If there’s a burnt piece of chicken, they’ll put it on their plate. Their kids are 8 or 9 years old and they’ve never been away.”

She laughed as she recalled watching one camper field a telephone call from home, issuing instructions and automatically starting to wash the dishes with one hand as she talked.

At camp, she said, the “real key” is campers know “another mother is taking care of them.” And there is the camaraderie, 15 or 20 other mothers with whom they can share war stories from the home front.

“We try to keep it real light,” Smith-Carter said. Mother’s Camp is for fun, not for solving major problems. “We have the combination of the woman feeling safe, the husband feeling good about it and even the kids feeling good about mom going to camp.”

About 300 women are now alumnae of Mother’s Camp, which is strictly for mothers over 21. The word has spread through networking by former campers and, yes, Smith-Carter said, some campers have told her they heard about it at a Tupperware party.

As some women are hesitant about making the drive to Big Bear during the winter, she is exploring “off the mountain” locales for winter camps, checking out beach and desert sites. She also is looking into the possibility of honest-to-goodness camps, tents and all, but isn’t convinced that this is most mothers’ idea of a fun time away.

Over Mother’s Day, the first deluxe Mother’s Camp was offered at Sleepy Forest Lodge, where amenities include in-room Jacuzzis and fireplaces. This upscale camp will cost between $350 and $450, will be limited to 12 women and will include a massage and a limo ride to a restaurant for Sunday brunch.

But, Smith-Carter said, “We don’t ever want to lose the woman who has four kids and is on a budget.” So convinced is she of the need that she is looking into expansion--”We would like to franchise and go across the United States.”

As the recent group of 16 campers headed home, some were already talking about coming again. Karen Leboffe, away from home for the first time, said, “Now I know I can do it.”

Janet Paulus said she’d return “any minute.” Wasn’t it wonderful, she mused, a whole weekend in which “nobody spilled their milk.”