This morning was tough. It was one of the most difficult mornings I’ve experienced as a parent. My two college girls packed up their cars, gave me hugs, and headed out. For the oldest, Marie, it was her third time, and I have gotten more used to her not being around these past few years. But for Stella, this was her first time, and it was harder to let go. The hugs were long, and the tears couldn’t be restrained. My daughters did not leave for college this morning, they left for spring break. Dropping them off at college was nothing compared to watching them drive away for spring break without me.

This would be the first time in 20 years that I have not spent spring break with my kids. It has always been our week of “Mommy and Me” time, starting with the first one when Marie was two, and I took off work because her preschool was closed for a week. My plan was to spend the week getting her fully potty trained, which turned out to be easier than expected. Since we had this accomplished by Monday, we spent the rest of the week taking day trips to aquariums, zoos and children’s museums, with lots of stops for ice cream, and so the annual tradition began. In the beginning, the biggest trips we took were to visit Grandma, back when this was all it took for an exciting getaway of visiting different parks, malls, and zoos than we could visit from home. Plus Grandma always had presents upon arrival. But about the time kids get to middle school, the enthusiasm to visit Grandma during the spring break significantly wanes, especially as they start to hear tales of friends going to exotic locals like Colorado or Florida.

The first real spring break “trip” was Marie’s 6th grade year when her aunt invited us to go skiing in Tahoe with her also 6th grade cousin and two older siblings. Stella and Catherine weren’t invited, so they spent another spring break at Grandma’s. They were none too happy about this, and insisted that the next year we must all go on a real spring break trip together. My sister-in-law, Amy, had been spring breaking in Watercolor, Florida, for several years now and as luck would have it, the following year their usual family traveling companions weren’t going to be able to make the trip and could we go instead. While Amy had suggested we join them in the past, I was not thrilled with the idea of a 12 hour car ride, especially if I was the only driver. But knowing my kids would dub me “Best Mom Ever” for at least a few minutes, I decided to accept the challenge, er I mean invitation.

One of the selling points for me was that Amy said the main mode of transportation is by bike, and that it is perfectly safe for kids to ride around themselves and go to the candy store while we had drinks and tapas at the local wine bar. Heaven. I packed the car the night before–bike rack with 4 bikes, coolers in the back, Thule on top stuffed to the gills. I woke the girls up at 4:25am with the intent to hit the road at 4:30am. Actually they weren’t really awake, they just blearily walked to the car in their PJs with pillows in hand and quickly went back to sleep, which was the plan. What was not the plan was the thunderstorms and torrential rain that accompanied us for the next 2 and a half hours. Fortunately the girls obliviously slept through it all, waking only when the sun started to come up as we neared the Louisiana border. Now they were starving. We stopped at one of the 74 (we counted) Waffle Houses on the way to Florida and had one of the best meals of our lives, or at least of mine, being that I was feeling especially heroic for what I’d just accomplished. The weather was clearing, and the excitement was building. Stella was particularly excited about the fact that she would drive through states she’d never been to before, and would be in four states in one day. Every “Welcome to (state)!” sign was met with shouts of celebration, even if I denied their repeated requests to stop and take photos with each sign.

Fourteen hours later, we arrived at our destination, and we were hooked. It was everything Amy had described–beautiful, safe, endless fun, made even more fun with cousins. We went back to Watercolor three more times along with the cousins and the Smartts, the family whose absence that first year resulted in our first trip. Ten kids with an age span of 6 years, 5 boys and 5 girls. Unfortunately, and this happened every single time, a cold and usually wet front would hit the panhandle of Florida the exact same week were there. The week prior and after were always balmy with a UV index no less than 8. One year, the temps dipped into the 20’s, and thankfully that was the year the house we rented had a heated pool. But the kids made the most of their time together, even spending an entire day making an iMovie which was actually quite hilarious. Most of the time the adults spent the day doing adult things–endless hours of playing cards with endless mimosas, eventually graduating to margaritas–while the kids spent the day doing kid things, like riding bikes to the beach, pools, and lunch at the food trucks. Everyone would be home by dark and supper would be on the table, even if it was pizza for the second or third night in a row, but it WAS really good pizza. Then more card playing, games, making our brackets for friendly March Madness competitions, or visits from other families we knew who were also in town.

We went back to Watercolor as much as we could, but we couldn’t always make the trip work for everyone each year. When we couldn’t go to Florida, we’d spend the week at spots closer to home, often with Amy and crew and sometimes the Smartts too. But no matter what, we never missed a spring break. Two years ago, we knew it was our last spring break trip to Watercolor. The boys were now all in high school, and three of them were hoping to make their high school baseball teams which would mean they would spend future spring breaks at tournaments. Last year, my husband and I took the girls and a couple of their friends to Belize knowing this was going to be our last spring break as a family. Stella would be headed to college with Marie in the fall, and Marie had been spending her past few spring breaks on trips with college friends. Stella made it clear that was her plan as well.

This morning Marie headed off to Galveston to spend the week on a Caribbean cruise, and Stella headed to Houston to pick up friends on their way to a rented house in Destin. She would be driving those same roads and highways we drove so many times over so many years, passing all those same “Welcome to Our State” signs, feeling the excitement build with each passing one. I told her I missed those days of driving her somewhere for spring break, especially to Watercolor. She told me she missed the days that I planned her trips, and that she would let me know when she arrived, even though she knew I’d be keeping tabs on Life360. About 6 hours later, she texted me a photo of the lunch she was eating at our favorite place to stop in Baton Rouge, and the tears flowed again. I told her to remember to honk when they drive through the Mobile tunnel. A few hours later she texted me a video her friend took from the backseat of them honking and cheering and driving through the tunnel, and the tears flowed again. Once she got to their house in Destin, she texted me as promised, and the tears flowed again. I was ready for them to graduate high school, I was ready for them to go off to college, I’m even ready for Marie to move to Dallas and start her new job when she graduates this May, but I was not ready for the spring breaks to be over for good and be left behind as they embark on their own, new adventures without me.