By Esther C. baird
First published in the Tri-Town Transcript
Just typing away over here in week six of quarantine … which some of you may know better as April vacation week. Some of my friends are excited about it because either they work for a school or their kids have not clicked with remote learning — for them it is a true break. Other friends think this may be the moment the world ends because without the structure of schoolwork, and not a single place to go to blow off steam, their homes may explode in a ball of stir crazy, over- screened kids whose brain patterns have turned into something more closely resembling a werewolf except triggered by requests to do chores instead of the full moon. Some of us fall nicely in the middle, in the land of moderation, where we enjoy the balance the break from the “new normal” provides and the time to try some new things around the house.
Ha ha, please! Regular readers must know that was a joke. I haven’t seen this side of moderate since I was about 28 years old. I’m more of a second option person. I was dreading spring break because it’s barely spring and it’s certainly not a break. My dinner fairies continue to be totally MIA while conversely the need for meals has gone way up.
We had planned to go to Arizona where we would stay at a hotel in the desert and basically be hot. We’d be hot by a pool, hot hiking in the sun and hot walking to the spa. We’d feel hot as we ordered hot food and hot (spicy) drinks. The goal, in a nutshell, was to be in weather that would never be mistaken for spring in New England.
Alas.
Still, I knew we had to try and enjoy the break or extreme teenage inertia might set in, which has a force even greater than a black hole.
I explained to our daughters that we were still going to have fun! But, the first day of break it snowed. I had no response to that so we skipped it. There might have been a lot of TV or phone usage. I have no idea. If it snows all bets are off and I go into low power mode.
But then it was sunny and I rallied. “Take a deep breath, girls. Smell that?”
The girls, standing in sweatshirts and sweatpants, the same they’d worn for let’s see, oh say the past six weeks, stared at me as I handed out a vacuum, paper towels and a bottle of bleach spray.
“That’s the smell of a sparkling pool that has been maybe just a little too heavily sanitized. You look so cute in your beach coverups!”
They weren’t impressed. But I posted a picture and used the hashtag #springbreak2020 so what could they do? Once it’s hashtagged, it’s real.
Still, it was hard for me to let go of my visions of relaxation and warmth. Making dinner in the crockpot, for the billionth time, wasn’t quite the same even if I squinted and played summer music.
So when our older daughter announced, “I’ve created a spa!” I was more than ready to participate. We walked up the stairs to the bonus room: it was dark and smelled of lavender, there was low ambient music playing and it was warm, almost hot. If I ignored the foosball and ping-pong table, it sounded, smelled and felt just perfect!
She walked us through mud masks and we lay on our backs with our eyes closed relaxing in the heat of the Arizona sun that blew, almost as if from a ceiling vent, on us. Our pool cover-ups were as soft as a sweatshirt and our plush towels were thick and padded, almost like wall-to-wall carpeting. A tiny gecko crawled by, so tiny you might mistake it for a stink bug, but not me. And through the windows I could see the rustling leaves of the palms and the short outlines of the cacti all spaced much like the trees and bushes in my driveway back at home.
The week is almost over now and I didn’t get much of a tan, but I did get to see plenty more creativity, resolve and an ability to adapt. It wasn’t the spring break we hoped for, but it still ended up being a real break and one we certainly won’t forget. How could we? It was #springbreak2020.