Taking a day off

needs: Taking a day off school

Taking a day off refills everyone’s tank and breaks the fever pitch momentum of a busy home school calendar. First term begins with waking summer minds testing for targeted learning. Term 2 and 3, the winter terms include Naplan and teachers and kids get down to work. The weeks are dotted with excursions, incursions, assemblies. Lots of reasons to break out the hot glue gun and make a costume or pack a multicultural lunch. There are many little events that make school exciting but can drive teachers, kids and parents insane under a persistent gentle pressure of costumes, projects and events. Term 4 ramps up testing for reports, which gives way to Christmas carols and swimming lessons. Between school and end of year parties for classes, teams and activities, the family diet nestles somewhere between candy canes and drive-thru. Managing fatigue and creating ease in term 4 is a challenge. Some days my family needs to opt out. Facebook memories have highlighted this.  On or about the middle of September for the last 3 years, my dudes and I have played hooky and gone to the beach.

The first year I didn’t plan it. I just woke up and the lunchboxes were so far out of reach that I decided we wouldn’t be going to school. The dudes had been on a slow boil towards crumbling and we were free falling into the end of the week. I just grabbed a few things and we left the house and school behind us and went to splash in the sea. My phone took the day off in the glove box. All that pressure just washed away and left us salty and breathing lightly. By the time we went back to school on the Monday, all the things that were making us worry were manageable. Sun kissed, blissed and ready to go.

The following year, funnily enough on the day before the same Friday in September I announced “dudes we are not going to school tomorrow. We are going to the beach”. They were pretty stoked and went to sleep with dreams in their eyes and I went to sleep looking forward to our magic day.  I again resisted the urge to plan and we travelled light. Somewhere between the water and sand, snippets of conversation came up, and without hurry, and push I got to hear their musings and confessions.  We had found the same bliss and all returned a little stronger. Having done it two years in a row, I felt like this magic day off was part of who we were. A Term 3 secret weapon.

Then we get to year 3, it was a hard one. We were all suffering. Our girl had taken a turn for the not quite easy and we were all struggling under the weight of her needs. Keen to give them some hope, I said on the Monday, “Hey don’t worry, this Friday we take to the beach” and they smiled through the frowns.  That afternoon, they got in the car all bent out of shape, she insisted there was a special assembly on Friday and he gave me a lop-sided wink. He had told his teacher he was going to physio on Friday. On the drive home, I tried to suggest in the face of their worry that A: the assembly might not be that important, and B: it wasn’t ok to lie to his teacher. That drive home was a teary mess, for all three of us. Still, that Friday, sitting in the warm shallows I watched them splash, tumble, laugh and fall into waves. I was grateful to the sea and what it meant to us on those secret days.

Of all the things I do with my dudes, I would love it if they did this with theirs. If I close my eyes I can feel the sun on their skin, the coolness of the water and the crunch of the sun and I want it for them, forever.