My three week break from school has been a blessing. It has given me time to do some things that just needed to be done: connect, disconnect, and reconnect.
Passing three weeks with a three year old can be like a prison sentence, or an excellent opportunity to reminisce and pass on the fibers of what make you you. We connected during trips of discovery to cultural, historic, and natural areas. We got to swim. We rode in boats. We went to an animal park (he was fascinated with the size of buffalo turds). He showed me what he called “owwie flowers” –the rest of us know them as cacti. One night I even spent 40 minutes trying to answer his question of “Why does the moon keep following us?”
Getting away from school, the house and the regular “routines and rituals” of our everyday existence took us to many exciting places and put over one thousand miles on the truck in the process. Being able to water the plants, feed the birds, and just drive away is somewhat liberating. The bills will still be coming to the house, but we won’t be there to pick them up. It is nice to drop off of the grid and live without a schedule on occasion. It becomes easy to see why so many of us are on depression and anxiety medications . . . the lives we live are not really ours. We belong to bill collectors and a never ending pile of laundry.
On a daily basis we deal with dozens of people. Some are strangers, some are acquaintances, and a few we even consider friends. Then there are the people you can never see often enough, the people on the short list we keep of lifelong friends that help keep us grounded when we get too uppity and pick us up when we hurt. Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and friends I consider brothers were all seen during this break. Our conversations these days turn to kids and our heads may have more salt than pepper, but these are the people that we really know and trust. One young lady found that she can still make my heart dance and sizzle like bacon on a skillet just as it did for her twenty years ago. It was time to reconnect with “my people.”
These breaks also allow us to learn about things we may have missed the first time we experienced them. To remember that, when allowed to be, we are all just grown-up kids on the inside and that we all need to go out and play on occasion. There may be physical differences we need to keep in mind as we age and relive our youth. Tomorrow you will be sore. You may need to stop for a nap. Happy Hour is not when you get to watch cartoons. And us bald guys should not drive cars with sunroofs
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