Taking time to smell the roses, 2004.
…is my third favorite holiday of the whole year. It is like a flotation device thrown to you just as you’re about to go under in the sea of the second semester. I don’t care anything about calendar dates—spring officially begins on the first day of Spring Break. The air smells different on that first day. There is new life and hope and comfort in it.
I even enjoy the week before Spring Break. You get the most agonizing of the four TAKS tests out of the way. We always put on a high school tennis tournament on the Thursday and Friday before S.B., partly because we get a lot of schools to enter, but mainly because it feels like S.B is starting two days earlier.
How we spend our S.B.’s affords us a microcosmic view of the stages of our lives. I can recall the S.B.’s of my youth. The goal was to jam-pack as much partying, carousing and just plain hard-living as I could into those nine glorious days. I could measure the success of my S.B. by the amount of sleep deprivation I was suffering at the end of it. I also remember a briefer, more contemplative phase. There was a float trip on the Current River in Missouri with two other guys—we saw lots of wildlife and hardly any other people (not many people were crazy enough to float when it was still so cold). We took turns swigging out of a whiskey bottle around the campfire, telling stories and listening to noises from the forest we knew nothing about. I haven’t seen the two guys I went floating with in forty years—but I remember them.
Then there were the family years. We wanted to do something the kids would remember. Often it involved going to visit a relative, since we were poor and travel is expensive—a brother in New Orleans, a sister in Missouri, Karen’s family in Dallas. Some years it would be people visiting us and trips to Sea World and Fiesta Texas and floats on the Guadalupe. Naturally, we also had ambitions for our S.B’s—we were going to paint this or plant that. I was going to get a jump on the next summer’s book project or screenplay. I think we always did better in the area of vacationing than in the area of accomplishment.
Then came the tennis era. S.B. meant a ZAT (Zone Area Tournament) in Houston, or a Champ Major Zone in Dallas, or a Super Champ Major Zone in Austin. It was fun, and we certainly spent a lot of time with our kids, but, in retrospect, we probably did more of the tennis circuit than we needed to.
Now we are in the post-children era. I am sitting on the back porch, watching the golfers go by. I just fixed myself a drink and I’m writing this. Happy as a clam. Karen left today to spend some time with her folks in Dallas. I’ll join her (and see my darling grand-daughter) on Thursday. I love my wife passionately, but there’s something about spending a few days at home alone that almost makes me giddy. Do you see what I’m talking about S.B. and stages of life? I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed S.B. more!
Yes, I’m aware that not everyone gets the S.B. holiday. They should. In fact, if I didn’t get one I’d probably find a way to invent one. Those people who talk about making the day after the Super Bowl an official federal holiday are crazy—it’s Spring Break that needs to go national.
In case you’re wondering about my other favorite holidays: Christmas is second. Why is a no-brainer—it’s Christmas and it lasts sixteen days. And my number one favorite holiday; year in, year out, never-changing, never arriving soon enough, never lasting long enough? Easy. Summer Vacation!
I guess it never occurred to me that teachers actually looked forward to SB as well.. maybe that is because as a kid you don’t really picture teachers as “real people”.. I remember how bizarre it would be to see them out of their element and in the “real world”. Nothing has changed in that aspect, I still get a little shocked to see my junior high math teacher sharing the bar with myself at little ol’ Deer Crossing Saloon.
I am captivated by your blogs! Great job! Keep up the good work!
that’s funny, mallory, b/c i thought the same thing as a student. i now know that NO ONE loves spring break, christmas, thanksgiving, and esp. summer as much as teachers. the irony is that most of us really do like our jobs.
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