Winter Break. It's been intruding and interrupting our thoughts ever since Thanksgiving break ended (because the teenage brain works best when jumping from break to break). For me it means twinkling lights, flickering candles, sparkling snow, rusty voices trying to harmonize while swarmed about a piano, shimmying shoulders to eighties music with a spatula in my hand, and slick cards in the palm of my sweaty hands as I decide which card to play in a tough game of Pinochle. In other words, I think of Winter Break as my 2 weeks of well-deserved R&R: rest and relaxation. But for others... it's total crunch time. Get out the textbooks, click the pens, slice the plastic off of the fresh stack of paper: all of this to get ready for midterms which is a little less than a month away. Personally, I think you're wasting your time if the only thing you're doing over break is studying for finals. Something that I find to be a great compromise is preparing for finals; which means dispersing your work over the two weeks in short clumps of hard work so you can finish those flashcards or catch up on your homework. This way you can enjoy your R&R while getting some work done (like what I'm doing right now). In case you're one of those people who just studies over Break and needs a break or if you just want to have a laugh- below, you will find a short write I composed about laughing and the importance of family. The whole point of this short write is to make you smile and realize that you do need some R&R this Winter Break. I hope you appreciate your family as much as I do this holiday season. So take my advice and
Here it is:
Floating, drifting, bouncing off the walls, creeping towards me. And then a WHAM in the face and a reflecting spazz attack in my hand. If I’m doing algebra, then there will be a thick line running across my paper from the original revelation. If I’m taking notes for chemistry, my pen just might find itself scratching a canyon in the textbook itself. This is my mother’s guffaw. It will be random and it will be loud. It will snake around your chest and shake you with surprise. But with the surprise comes the shocking slap-on-the-butt accompaniment of my older sister’s laugh. This will strike you with brute force but then roll off your back with the ease like a drip of water. When you hear it, you will want to laugh so hard, the imaginary drink you had in your mouth will start coming out of your nose as you snort and snicker along. Then comes the giggle of my other sister as she finally registers what they are all laughing about. With this giggle comes the image of her face in my mind, her nose scrunched up and her eyes squinted into smiles of their own. The instant my mom is finished explaining why they are laughing so hard, you will hear my dad’s belly –laugh. His laugh can be mistakenly traced ancestrally all the way back to Santa’s laugh. Not the stereotypical ho- ho- ho, but the laugh that erupts deep from a big belly and then explodes as it comes out of your mouth in the shape of an “O”. Now if my whole family is laughing at once, my dog will decide that to complete the ruckus he must join in with a beagle’s howl. Whether I am listening or laughing along, there will be a huge, goofy grin plastered on my face as I try my best to record this new memory forever. Even if I don’t recall what we were laughing about I will always remember that this is how we breathe together.
Happy Holidays to you and yours
and yes when I say R&R... this will be my last blog post for awhile :)
(photo cred: tattoodonkey.com)
