I Need a Pause Button

My Spring Break is coming to a close and I am not sure how I feel.  One part of me wishes I had done more, accomplished something substantial, completed a project -- anything I could point to and say, "That's what I did with my time." Another part of me longs for even more time to do very little, to sit and watch silly sitcoms with my boys, hear their wild stories, watch them dance their goofy dances.  And there is even another part (albeit, a very small part) that wants to be back at school because it uses parts of my brain that get mushy even after only a few days off.


When Spring Break started I thought that as a teacher I am lucky because I get to feel that excitement of Spring Break nearing, that anticipation of a week of frivolity.  Most people leave the joys of Spring Break behind as they enter the world of adulthood.  But tonight I don't feel so much lucky as I do conflicted.  It is always near the ends of these breaks when I have these fantasies of taking my family off to some remote small town in the middle America, spending our days working a farm, taking long bike rides and preparing impromptu picnics while our nights are filled with reading aloud to one another from great books and maybe singing together while one of us plays an acoustic guitar.

And then I remind myself that true happiness comes from finding satisfaction not only in the pursuit of dreams, but also in the delights of the present moment -- my four year old's head on my knee, an extra hour of sleep in the morning, nowhere to be tomorrow.