Can there be such a thing as too many spring breaks?
If this is a malady, I have it.
If it is a blessing, I am looking for a way to appreciate it.
This week is spring break for Gwinnett County schools, which typically falls the first full week of April. It is relevant to me because my youngest son, a high school sophomore, is out of school.
The Gwinnett County schools spring break used to be the only spring break we cared about. All three of our boys were in these schools, and when they went on break, we planned funtivities such as campouts, cruises, theme park visits and “staycations.”
I fear those days are over. Our oldest has a real job, and even though it is at a university, he doesn’t get spring break. Our middle is in college, and like all colleges these days, his spring break is inexplicably in the middle of winter.
I work in the higher education sector, and my employer had spring break for students and faculty only slightly later in the calendar year so as to fall in late winter. But like my oldest, I’m just staff, so I had to work (though with an empty campus, there was abundant parking!)
Spring break, spring break everywhere, and not a moment to relax.
We are not going anywhere fun and exotic during Carlton’s spring break because it just so happens to coincide with the busiest season of the year for my day job. Like a tax accountant, I’m slammed in April. The entire academic year builds to a cascading series of events including Alumni Weekend, the Honors and Awards Banquet, Rikard Lecture in the Hammack School of Business, the Liberal Arts and Sciences Symposium, special celebrations, museum lectures, theatrical performances, choral concerts, the spring Board of Trustees meeting and finally, breathlessly, Commencement, which lands on May 3 at Oglethorpe this year.
But before you set up a GoFundMe or add me to your prayer list, I have to admit that having too many spring breaks is a problem in the same way having too many pizzas is a problem. You’ve got pizza, so what’s the problem?
It’s only a problem if you can’t eat the pizza and you want pizza. It’s only problematic when you can’t store all the pizzas because your fridge is full of weird congealed salads. It’s not helpful to have a bunch of pizza if you’re in the midst of one of those stomach bugs that make you eschew chewing anything, most of all pizza, which is all that is advertised on the television while you lay on your sofa in a nauseated, weakened state with a plastic trash can beside you.
Having so many spring breaks in my life is only a problem because I can’t enjoy them all.
Turns out, I am not on spring break this year, merely spring break adjacent. I can see the fun and I know the fun is happening all around me, but I can’t have it myself.
Close readers of the world-renown and virally popular New South Essays may recall that my Darling Beloved and I took a trip with our middle son the first weekend of his spring break back in midwinter to Washington, D.C.
“Doesn’t that count, Mr. Whiny Whinerpants?” you may be asking.
Yes, that counts, and I am not complaining about that wonderful, if not frigid, experience. But there are so many spring breaks I could be having, and I’m not. And that, friends, is the quintessential injustice of living in the New South.
Nevermind that our parents walked to school uphill both ways in the snow and had one day off for Christmas and 15 minutes for Easter. We have the opportunity to take vacations all year round because our schools are in cahoots with the Disney empire. There is literally a week out of school every other month from August to May.
Speaking of Disney, we have done the family vacation to the Walt Disney World Resort during spring break. We ran into so many people from our neighborhood back in Lilburn that I wondered if somehow our fair city had become Fantasyland overnight.
I kid you not, we saw friends from down the street outside “It’s A Small World.” I couldn’t decide if it was ironic or too on the nose. Everyone in the United States of America along the I-75 corridor with spring break that week showed up in Orlando.
We met so many Michiganders and Kentuckians while waiting exorbitant amounts of time to ride in tiny boats looking at animatronic figures singing earworms that I really began to wonder if this was some alternate universe in which the U.S. flag only contained three stars.
I think the real issue I’m struggling with this week is guilt. It’s not that I really want to go anywhere; I genuinely enjoy my work. These last few weeks of the college year are actually fun. I just feel a twinge of guilt that I am not free to make the week an epicly memorable experience for Carlton like we used to go into debt to do when we had the older ones around.
We did take Carlton to NYC to see Broadway shows and eat at fancy restaurants back during his fall break in October, but what have we done for him lately? Please don’t call DFACS on us for child neglect.
To make myself feel better, I’ll treat my FOMO by spending the week scrolling social media savoring all the posts from our friends enjoying the mountains, the beach, the Grand Canyon and New York City.
And when I come across those poor unfortunate souls trapped among the hordes of Michiganders at the Magic Kingdom, I’ll start a Go Fund Me and add them to the prayer list.
Happy spring break(s)!
New South Essays 