A break from the break

Written February 26, 2023

Day 5 of 40 in a 45-day period: When I was teaching I thought a break off of school in the middle of February was an unnecessary but welcome relief. Once we get into the new year the rest of the school year goes in 6-7 week chunks, with a long stretch after spring break when we go as late into June as possible, with little regard given to the last day of school falling on a Monday every so often.

Since having children, I still look forward to the breaks as a pause on the homework battles, sprinting out the door and hoping for good train karma, arranging sitters and juggling the Thursday logistics of three kids and three different activities. Then the second weekend of the break arrives and it’s time to be done with the pause. Monday morning never looks so good as a Monday morning on the heels of a school break.

When my kids were little Mondays didn’t hold the same promise. I worried about what I was missing while trying to hang on to a career that seemed to be slipping backward. Turns out my kids remember very little of this time period and frankly, I can’t remember much either. That may be due to the exceptional amount of sleep deprivation in those years or the exhaustion of spending 63 of those 81 months either pregnant or nursing/pumping. Whatever the cause, those years are a tired blur remembered more from pictures than core memories.

I wonder how I’ll remember this time in another five years. Will Mondays become the new Friday nights, full of promise and a chance to catch my breath? Will they take on new pressures or new reliefs? Will the day come when parenting will feel a little less exhausting and I can experience my kids more as people and less as the moles in Whack-A-Mole, a new problem/project/idea/issue popping up as soon as the previous ones are resolved?

Time will tell. There are glimpses of what this time could feel like, when I watch my kids head into school, after waving goodbye and feeling like we’re one step closer to that independence. Tomorrow Monday will bask in all its glory as we get back to our routines. In a few weeks we’ll look at pictures from past spring breaks, ready to welcome a pause once again.

Round and round we’ll go.