Spring Break, Spring Fever!

I think it's the sunshine; it just does something for you. It’s a medical fact that sunshine is the best healer for sad souls, broken hearts, and physical sickness. Just think about the cold /rainy /cloudy days, and how your mental state changes the minute you open your eyes. Seeing the darkness, hearing the rain, every fiber of your being wants to pull the covers back over your head and disappear. It’s so much easier to get out of bed when the sun is shining.

The best part of spring forward when I was growing up was that school was almost over; Spring Break/Summer Time!! I grew up in Albany, Georgia and the closest piece of heaven was Radium Springs; just a mile from my house. The water came from a natural spring so it was ice cold, and when you came out of the water, there was never any warmer feeling in the world, than the sun shining on your purple, goose-bumped body.

My friends and I would lie out in the sun, white as snow, slathering baby oil mixed with iodine because it tans faster, BURNS faster; because we knew we had one week to achieve a show stopper tan. Running combs wet with peroxide through your hair to 'sun streak' it’ because mama says no hair color; but this you can do when you're lying out in the sun and maybe she won't notice. 

Halter tops, shorts, walking to the store on the dirt trail for a Coca Cola Icee. Talking about boys, who's cute, who's not; who we really wish liked us and who we really wish wouldn't talk to us at all. Picking out the perfect bathing suit, one that doesn't make you “feel” or look fat; and if you were like me, the one that helped make you look “fuller” in some places and “smaller” in others. “That bathing suit shows too much hip” Mama would say; which was a nice way of saying too much of your behind was showing.

Staying outside ‘til almost dark, walking around the block with your best friend talking about everything and nothing and when it's time to go home, you walk each other half way; so each of you only have to go half way back alone.

Spring Break brings different joys for me now. Early morning fishing and watching the sun come up, standing in our yard with my husband in the early evenings holding a hose, watering dirt that will become flowers and talking about our day. But I still love watching my son and his friends piling up, buying food, loading boats with plenty of swim trunks in tow; headed out to make their own memories. Memories filled with sights and smells that will bring flashbacks of their own for years to come.

I saw a billboard the other day that expressed my feelings about this time of the year so perfectly, “Spring is here! I’m so excited I wet my plants!”