The Lesson Of The Lost Luggage

By: Sara Honikman

This summer, UPS lost my 12-year-old daughter’s suitcase on its way to sleepaway camp.

And of course, they didn’t lose the suitcase with her linens. They lost the one with virtually all of her clothes.

My husband and I send our daughter to Camp Wild Rose in Wisconsin, quite a trek from New York. To make traveling easier, we’ve always shipped her luggage ahead rather than having her schlep it through airports. We had done this for years without a hitch.

Until now.

My husband and I were in Peru when I received an email from the camp director letting me know one of her bags had never arrived. I was thousands of miles away, my daughter was essentially down to the clothes on her back, and I couldn’t exactly run upstairs, pack a box from her closet, and ship it out.

So there I was in Peru, ordering clothes on Amazon for a tween girl. If you’ve ever shopped for a 12-year-old with very specific opinions about what she will and will not wear, you know this was no small task. To make matters trickier, camp policy limits phone calls, so communication was sparse. I ordered the basics and hoped for the best.

Then, something surprising happened: she was completely fine.

For almost a month, my daughter lived mostly in her friends’ clothes, supplemented by the few items I managed to ship to camp. In our brief emails back and forth, she kept reassuring me that she was doing great. If this had to happen to one of my kids, it happened to the right one—she is naturally laid-back and took the whole situation in stride.

Still, I felt terrible.

After a few weeks with no sign of the bag, I told her not to worry. Surely UPS would reimburse us, and when she got home, we’d go on a fantastic shopping spree to replace everything.

Three weeks later, the suitcase showed up. At my house.

By then, camp was nearly over, making it pointless to ship the bag back to Wisconsin. The good news: her clothes were found. The bad news: there went the shopping spree.

When she finally came home, I asked her what it had actually been like to spend a month at camp without her clothes. She shrugged. It really hadn’t been a big deal; in fact, borrowing outfits from her friends had been kind of fun.

I asked her what she thought the big lesson of the summer was.

Without missing a beat, she said, “Don’t ship your luggage.”

I laughed. “No! That is definitely not the lesson.”

Because to me, the lesson was much bigger: “you need so much less than you think you do.”

Once I started reflecting on it, I realized how desperately we all need that reminder.

When my 10-year-old son came home from his camp, he mentioned that some kids had mini-fridges and cooking appliances in their bunk rooms. Refrigerators. At sleepaway camp. And that’s on top of canteens that have evolved from simple snack bars into full-service restaurants.

When did camp get so fancy?

When I was a kid, going to canteen for an Italian ice, a bag of chips, and one of those giant rainbow candy sticks was the highlight of the day. Remember Big Bo’s? They were the best. Back then, you ate whatever was served in the dining hall. Sometimes you liked it; sometimes you didn’t. Your bunk was hot, it probably smelled, and you lived out of a tiny wood cubby. Somehow, that rugged simplicity was the entire point.

Now, look at our kids’ camp packing lists. Look at their closets. Look at what we—and I fully include myself here—have slowly elevated from luxury to “necessity.”

My daughter is no different from the other girls in our neighborhood. She loves White Fox and Aviator Nation. Her closet is overflowing. She likes stuff.

And yet, when almost all of that stuff vanished for a month, what happened?

Nothing.

She went swimming. She did crafts. She laughed with her friends, borrowed t-shirts, got dressed every morning, and had a fantastic summer.

She adapted.

Maybe our kids are far more resilient and adaptable than we give them credit for.

My husband and I inadvertently learned the exact same lesson on our trip. We traveled through Peru for two weeks with just a backpack and a small carry-on each. I wore the same sweatshirt over and over, washed it at a local laundromat, repeated outfits constantly—and I was completely fine.

In fact, it was strangely freeing. Less to carry. Less to manage. Less to choose from. Just less.

We spend so much money accumulating things we barely use, only to require bigger closets, extra organizers, and storage bins to hold it all. It makes me wonder what subtle message we are sending our children.

Maybe we don’t have to wait for a shipping mishap to teach them this.

We could make a game out of it. Challenge your kids to live out of a capsule wardrobe for a week. The next time you travel, see if the family can pack using only backpacks. Let them experience firsthand that having less doesn’t mean enjoying life any less.

And the next time we find ourselves in a store eyeing another $200 sweatshirt for a child whose closet is already packed, we can pause and ask: “Does my child actually need this?”

Or more importantly: “Am I really doing her a favor by making sure she never goes without?”

There are plenty of things from the “good old days” I have no desire to bring back, but I do find myself missing that simplicity. A time when camp was less about what was in your cubby and more about who was sitting next to you on the bunk. When being a little hot, a little uncomfortable, or eating a lunch you hated wasn’t treated as a crisis to solve.

Maybe our kids don’t need us to make every experience smooth, luxurious, and abundant. Maybe having a little less is the very thing that shows them how much they already have.

Although, if you ask my daughter, the takeaway is still pretty simple:

Next summer, the bags are going on the plane. 

Sara Honikman is a special education teacher and women’s fitness instructor in the Five Towns. She holds dual master’s degrees in General and Special Education and is a NASM Certified Personal Trainer. Drawing from her experience in education, fitness, and child development, she enjoys writing about resilience, personal growth, and the lessons that help people flourish both inside and outside the classroom.