The last day of school has arrived. Summer vacation starts next week.

Wait. Right there.

Stop and identify exactly how you felt when you read that notice. Did your heart lighten? Or did your stomach drop? A little of both?

My heart absolutely lightened. And then my stomach dropped.

We are standing at the edge of a water sprinkler, glorious sun warming our skin, lighting up the water droplets as they fly through the air, and all I can think is that I have work to do. I want to jump right in (yes! let’s do it!) but then I’d have to dry off and get dressed all over again and, just ugh.

I love summer at home with my kids. I realize that not all parents feel this way. I’m not, then, one of those parents that dread the kids being home. We do all we can to embrace every day off, deliberately spinning moments into memories lest the entire summer slip away. That’s the thing – if I didn’t stop myself and appreciate the gift of time we’ve been handed, the entire summer would evaporate with nothing but lots of hours on the couch to show for it.

The movie theater was small and lush. Old. Glass brick in the entry. A single screen. Of course a single screen.

It was small town 1984. I was eight years old, growing up in a rural town in southern Illinois. My parents owned a real estate company downtown, next door to the old movie theater. Shaking my head as I write this, I’m trying to wrangle the right words to explain what it was like to grow up there, then.

My parents worked long hours, successful business owners, very hands on. My younger brother and I spent countless hours with them in the office and would inevitably grow restless. When the wiggles would overcome us, we were allowed to wander around downtown, unsupervised. It was 1984. It was a small town. It was safe.

It just was. I miss that freedom. I impossibly miss it for my children.

One evening, I was with my best friend, Natalie, at the office. My parents had to work and allowed Natalie and I to scoot next door and watch the movie playing. Back then, you just watched whatever was playing. Going to the movies was the fun, the movie itself didn’t really matter.

The movie playing was The Karate Kid.

I will never forget that movie theater experience. The seats were filled by the time Natalie and I arrived so we had to sit at the back. The movie was amazing and my eight year old heart fell deeply in love with Ralph Macchio, absolutely. We quickly became completely swept away by the movie.

And we weren’t alone. That’s the bit I want to share with you. At the end of the movie, when Daniel does the crane kick? The entire audience leapt to their feet and applauded. I get goose bumps remembering it.

Everyone. Everyone stood up and screamed. Applauded. Hooted with vindicated laughter. It. was. awesome. I’d never seen anything like it before, but from our perch near the back row, we saw the wave of raw emotion ripple through the theater and my heart burst.

We were part of something very cool. We were eight years old.

I have been chasing that communal experience ever since. And that’s why I want you to get your act together and go see Marvel’s The Avengers this weekend. Yes, The Avengers.

When Quinn was born, I quietly swore to myself that I would not be that “know it all” new mother. I rubbed my roundly pregnant belly and promised myself that I would be open-minded with the simpletons who insisted on giving me advice, even if I knew better. I’d welcome The Village and nod in deference.

I also promised that I wouldn’t let those same people chuckle to themselves for my being overprotective or over-researched. None of that, “Isn’t she cute? Not letting him eat off the floor! Just wait til she has her next kid. No more bubble-wrapping her babies then. Silly little girl playing Mommy.”

I would hit the ground running with kid #1 as though he were kid #5! Just watch me!

Oh, I would strike all the right chords, let me tell you. I would be well-researched on all of the latest child development studies AND let my kid eat off the floor.  Just confuse the bones out of all of my lookers-on, that’s right! You think you have me pegged? Ha! Watch me feed my child exclusively organic food in his hemp jumper AND vaccinate him to the hilt while letting him watch TV.

You don’t know me. (insert Z-snap here)

For good measure, I might find a study that stated letting kids eat off the floor is a good thing. Something about building immunity. Cover my bases.

In short, I had read too many magazine articles and absorbed too many modern parenting books. I imagined an army of strangers and loved ones poking their nose in my business (seriously, that’s what all of the articles swore would happen) and so I prepared. I would be graceful… while still knowing better. I would pull it off.

I absolutely wouldn’t do my all-time favorite thing in all of the whole wide world and SET THESE PEOPLE STRAIGHT.

City of decadence, in both food and lifestyle, I became a mother in New Orleans. Indulgences were earned every day, as though the river that snaked around the city demanded it.

The French Quarter was our home when we first moved to the city as a young couple, though eventually we moved Uptown to Magazine Street and then to a quiet street right off of Audubon Park and Zoo. That final move came in time for our first son’s birth, moving us off of the busy traffic of Magazine and into a nestled quiet of sidewalks and cozy parks. It also placed us within a stroller-ride of a Whole Foods Market.

New Orleans was my first coherent exposure to organic food. I won’t pretend that I didn’t associate “organics” with dreads and henna, up to and including that first bit of exposure. Honestly, I didn’t understand the concept of “whole foods” until I walked into my first Whole Foods proper and I had never tried to understand it.

You aren’t interested in the “why” behind that. It was early 2000 and… I don’t know what to tell you. It was a lifetime ago.

My understanding of organic food was very much wrong. At best it was uninformed and at worst it was a screaming cliché bordering on offensive. I wasn’t convinced that eating organic made much difference and absolutely felt it was a lot of hype. I probably pictured a hefty number of entitled faux-hippies who were, in fact, just spoiled rich kids looking for a cause and some poster paint.

Yeah, probably that.

Moments that separate joy from mundane are fleeting. You miss them if you aren’t paying attention. You miss the opportunity to spin them in your favor. The smiles on the faces in the photo below?
That is joy spinning.

• • •

Spring Break arrived on pink-lacquered tippy toes. In other words, I never saw it coming.

Every opportunity to recognize the signs lolly-gagged around me for weeks.

Driving along the Mississippi Gulf Coast beaches every single morning, I noticed the jet ski huts reopen along the beach. Candy-striped umbrellas sprouted in earnest along the shore as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes during school drop-off. The neon beach shops rolled back their shutters and rolled out their inflatable wares.

At most, I may have thought, “Huh.” At most, I may have thought, “Huh. Those tourists are determined because this is not what I would call a warm 10am.” What I did not think was, “Huh. Spring Break must be coming. Wonder what my own kids would like to do…”

The sour punch is that my attention is consistently divided in so many directions that I utterly live for mini-vacations. I have tunnel-vision for long weekends and eye contact with the kids. Stay-cations totally count. I loathe allowing a single long weekend escape our greedy “Let’s do something fun!” grasp. I hoard memories and days off school beg for memory-making.

So this sneaky Spring Break just can not stand.