Spring Break

Here are two of the three spring breakers:

I love spring break. Everyone is happy and more relaxed. Warmer temperatures invade our space and excite our senses. My boys climb into bed with me in the morning. Exhausted, the baby, Josh and I fall back to sleep for an extra hour. We wake and make cinnamon biscuits. They don’t turn out. We aren’t mad though. It’s spring break. We clean the house up a little, no one gets worked up about it though. We run to the library and then to toys r us. The boys play playstation, psp, and legos. They play basketball outside with our neighbor friends. She sun shines. The wind blows. The sounds of spring can be heard through our screen door. The baby sleeps. I type. Spring is good. Even despite the fact that we are stuck at home for a day because the ignition locked up on our truck. It was fine.

Next day: Spring break reveals a lot to me about how idealistically, I would love to imagine this wonderful utopian Mother/child (ren) relationship, and how I so adamantly fail at that again and again. I envision getting up in the morning baking homemade goodies for breakfast, loving every minute I get to spend with my school age children while they are on break. In reality, they eat pop tarts and fight over the new PSP that only the older one owns (and every other game system in our home has just taken a rear seat to). I loose my cool and blow my top, and everyone sulks. I mess up. Instead of just “going with it” I react to what I should have been expecting! They are no more used to this kind of schedule than I am. I take them to visit my former boss of ten years ago at her bakery. I am excited to show her how they’ve grown. They touch all of the plastic bakery containers, denting them, then undenting them. I try to catch up with her and give them the “eye,” thinking they will surely stop, as they aren’t small children, but they don’t. So I tell them to stop touching. They do. For a couple of minutes. Grrrrrrrr….. Embarrassed, I wish my former boss well, tuck my head between my legs, and exit with my children who will now hear all about it. Brielle sleeps for two hours in her sling. I don’t mind keeping her close, since she just got her shots, but my back begins to feel like it’s falling apart. Ah, well, there are two days left, and God is great, so therefore great things can still happen. I only wish that sometimes I would not imagine such ease of life, and set myself up for an inevitable disappointment. I have a feeling that expecting a sense of unrest in this different schedule would prevent some things, and more joy could be found in the unexpected.