Spring Break

I cannot remember the last occasion when I felt so old.

It began as a valiant effort to exude the spontaneity to which Type A’s (like myself) are generally adverse. I piled my entourage into our rental school bus, a mammoth Dodge Charger, which affords the singular advantage of being mistaken for a police car, and headed towards the beaches of Pensacola. Eschewing directions as a crutch for the faint hearted controlling variety, I forged East at the mercy of the Alabama Dept. of Transportation. You might think my intimate acquaintance with PENDOT’s “excellence” would have been sufficient warning. However, I was confident that this was what fun laid-back moms do (like Lori Benbow Kapiloff); come hell or coastal water, I could do “fun” too.

To say our journey was circuitous would be like observing that the South has a few Republicans. Yet it did afford us a motorized tour of Alabama in the raw. Tempted as we were to visit Bail Bonds are Us and a particularly enticing establishment boasting of bargain "Turkey Poop", we continued on- sublimely ignorant of our need for both bail money and affordable feces. Thankfully, the children were saintly pioneers and Eowyn even relaxed into her therapist mode sagely suggesting, “Mama, let’s talk.” During these tête-à-têtes, she will either break into song or inquire as to the precise location of every person she knows or debrief on the latest Sunday School scandal (i.e. “Mama, Iza-a-yah was really mad. I Do NOT know why.” Incidentally, I have yet to meet this angry kid). All the while, I was attempting to corral my Northern vehicular aggression, since Eowyn has taken to inserting my idioms into her monologues: There is nothing more convicting than hearing your toddler empathetically demand, “What the heck, people? Drive your car!” This is my three year old conscience.

Eventually, the glistening sands of the Gulf Shores greeted our weary eyes and I reaffirmed to my tiny travelers -with practiced gusto- what incomparable fun would certainly be ours this day at the beach. After tethering Eowyn to a stationery object, safe from the magnetism of traffic, I began to unpack only to discover that my reckless spontaneity cost me a towel and a few other indispensable beach accessories. Clearly, whoever said, you just “jump in your car and go” did not have kids. And then, within moments, as we ascended the beach, I was surrounded by those whose lives are a tribute to that mantra: Spring Break 2010.

The epiphany arrived in the form of a football drunkenly lobbied at me by a near naked undergrad. Yes, while carrying my infant son, nearly glowing in my trademark Lilly pinks and greens, I was invisible to some collegiate and hit with pigskin. Outrage. And this is when I felt so old. When was the last time I even acknowledged this hedonist holiday…Back in my twenties- a phrase I am now loathe to utter.

Pigskin assault aside, the day could not have been more beautiful. Crystalline waters. Pearl-white sand. And my two favorite minors. Dining on a picnic feast of Peanut Butter and Jelly, I realized the Sesame Street song’s assertion, “One of these things does not belong” in this case- was us. The itty bitty swimwear of undergrads is (frighteningly) NOT a respecter of persons and by comparison, in our “spontaneous beach trip” attire, we looked like Mennonites. However, buoyed by Eowyn’s rapture and the brilliant expanse of sky, we found that we did indeed have incomparable fun. Eowyn was oblivious to the –quite literal- fraternity hazing at every dune and as we all sat eating ice cream in the expansive back seat of our monstrous Charger, Eowyn remarked with contented satisfaction, “Look at us, we’re all just hanging out.” That day Beer pongers on the Pensacola beaches did not have as much fun: Nothing puts the sexy back in Spring Break like a mom wearing a baby front pack just “hanging out” with her juice box hazing daughter.