For a couple weeks, we had been talking about how spring break was coming up, and to us parents the very phrase "spring break" spurs a Pavlovian response so strong that its very mention can render an immediate sunburn, a hangover, and annoying falsetto WOOHOOOs echoing from the ghosts of spring break revelers past. Spring break is as closely associated with college and coming of age as perhaps the onset of balding and slowing metabolism.
We had never really discussed with our kids the true meaning of spring break, but children are instinctive and they could sense that the magic words ignited a sparkle in our eyes - a deeply rooted yearning for a former life virtually devoid of responsibility and dictated by nothing more than rambling, senseless waywardnicity. It's something we all struggle with after graduation...the cruel fact that spring break goes away and disappears from your life when you really need it most.
Maybe it was because of our obvious fondness for that one week each year of utter freedom, but somehow Holden picked up on the spring break attitude, the sentiment, the completely care-free, caution-to-the-wind joie de vivre.
As I was getting him ready for bed the night spring break officially started, he pulled on some pajama pants over his bare little buttocks. I asked him "are you going to put on some underwear with your jammies?"
"Dad! It's SPRING BREAK! We can go commando!" he declared.
For those of you without kids, man you are missing it.
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