My Own Parent Trap
December 12th, 2025
Photo: Ishwari Bhatt
Writer: Georgia Silverton
Editor:Talia Kohn
It had always been her favorite movie. Her source of comfort, its script followed her through time with characters who embodied all that she once begged the universe for as a child: discovering a long lost twin in a cabin at sleepaway camp, two homes split between a London townhouse and the charm of a Californian estate. A mother who designed intricate wedding dresses and a father she could horseback ride beside through the hills of Napa Valley. And, of course, fiery red braided neatly down her back.
My mother’s description of my choice to work at a sleepaway camp felt simplified. Truthfully, it embarrassed me as her friends looked at me with eyes of polite amusement, as if I were still the little girl sitting cross legged in front of our television, enthralled by Lindsay Lohan’s life as a camper. Yet I sat there at her dinner party, twirling my fork around my plate in silent agreement. Our inner child is always within us. Though often dormant, its power is underestimated. It drives the decisions we make when we finally have the autonomy to chase the fantasies that exist on the other side of a movie screen.
Yet the cinematic glow of The Parent Trap wasn't what I experienced, nor did the script of my season in America follow Hollywood’s storyline. I didn’t return home to Sydney with keys to an estate in Napa Valley or a new twin sister.
Girl’s Bunk One, with 16 seven year old girls didn’t resemble the set I had memorized. The faint smell of sunscreen, old lake water, and Sephora’s skincare products spilled on the wooden floor didn’t uphold the standards of a film set. There were no tranquil morning paddles, but instead, routine wake ups at 7am, followed by a chorus of American accents shouting my name.
But the mess of it all became a kind of liberation, its chaos created a space that softened the expectations I brought with me.
On visiting day, camp inched closer to the idyllic films I grew up imagining. Parents ran to their kids with gift baskets adorned with love. They set up tents and laid out spreads of food they drove hours to share with their kids.
The scene I watched that afternoon felt cinematic, in a way that no set design could manufacture. In the evenings when we lit the campfire, I found myself surrounded by counselors whose lives looked nothing like mine back in Sydney. As we made s’mores and exchanged stories from our homes (and learned slang I still don’t understand to this day), I heard about U.S. states I only ever read about.
With no pressure to be polished or impressive or certain about anything, camp felt like a movie set built purely for the joy of children. The days formed scenes of their own, each one shaped by the campers who filled them, until all of us were contributing to the same shared story.
In the absence of a twin sister, I found something else: a compass of my own. And though my hair never turned fiery red, I realized that I became the girl from my favorite movie.
I wrote my own Parent Trap script, and I smiled through it the way my seven year old self always hoped I would.
