Spring break in the COVID fall

Travels with the grandson

-  JAMES MCGREGOR

Jimmy McGregor and Bentley walk through the animal park: “Spending time with my grandson is sometimes as simple as walking with him and talking about what we see and hear,” said Jimmy. “I love being one of his guides through life.”

For a few decades now, my wife Julene and I have taken a “Spring Break” trip.

Sometimes it was just our kids and sometimes we would take the kids and a friend or two. Our kids are now grown, so when we go on a trip in the spring, we will sometimes take our grandson Bentley.

2020 was very different from other years. With the pandemic, a Spring Break trip was out of the question.

It was tough news for Bentley. He was looking forward to the trip since we talked about it around Christmas 2019.

Our family trips are usually full of unexpected issues. Having three daughters, crazy things tended to happen at times. It would not be unusual for us to be seen with a daughter wearing a fake mustache on vacation or even having a daughter get into poison ivy and a few minutes later, fall into the mud.

We even had a daughter needing one last bowl of clam chowder, after a full meal, “Just to fill in the cracks,” and ended up with a tummy ache.

All of these issues fail to compare to COvId-19 and what it did to our plans.

Months went by and as the world started to settle into the norms of COvId-19, we started to think about the “Spring Break” trip — only to be taken in the fall.

First, we had to find an activity that was open. The list was very short. Normally, I try to plan our trips near bookstores, unfortunately at this point bookstores were closed.