In the days after students return to campus from spring break, we exchange stories of trips to Florida, visiting friends abroad and road tripping to various places throughout the country. My response to people asking me what I did over the break is always the same: I just went home.
While I love hanging out with my friends and definitely prefer a warm climate to the blizzard that hit New York last week, I appreciate every opportunity I have to spend time with my whole family. My siblings and I are all away at school now, and between breaks that don’t overlap and summer internships, we are rarely all home at the same time anymore, so Thanksgiving, winter and spring breaks are all reserved for my family.
My family moved around several times while I was growing up, and constantly having to adjust to a new place with new people caused me to grow extremely close with my siblings. I love being able to talk to my brother about how school is going for him or watching episode after episode of ridiculous television shows with my sister. Being trapped in the house during a blizzard is actually a really fun experience for us because even though we weren’t able to spend much time with our friends, we have spent our entire lives acting as each other’s best friends when we found ourselves alone.
My parents make my experience at home even better. I know a lot of people think they have the greatest parents in the world, but I’m pretty sure this is actually the case in my family. Every time I’m home, I spend hours sitting at the kitchen table with my mom and dad talking about everything — what’s going on at Notre Dame right now, current political events and even “Hamilton” (because somehow the conversation always manages to come back around to “Hamilton”). I’m not at all ashamed to say that — as much as I love Notre Dame and spending time here — when I’m here, I miss my mom and dad like crazy.
I didn’t get remotely tan, I didn’t go anywhere new and I didn’t do anything particularly exciting over spring break, but I had a great one. The infrequency with which my entire family is home now has made me appreciate those occasions even more than I did when we all lived together and regularly drove each other crazy. At the end of the day, my family members are my best friends, and I can’t imagine anyone else I would rather relax and recharge for the rest of the semester with. Besides, at least my skin isn’t peeling while I recover from sunburn right now.
