With all of my commitments to school and basketball, my winter holiday has almost always been surprisingly short. While I was at Hopkins we would have exams scheduled as late as the 21st of December, and would have to return to campus for practice on the 26th. Often times my family would be taking trips during this time, and a central location for the extended family on my father’s side to meet up is usually some where in the Caribbean. After a few short days of laughing, dancing, drinking, and eating with my family on the beach some place warm, it goes without saying, that my flight home alone (often on Christmas Day) back to cold, dark, rainy school in Baltimore was never fun. A few of the guys on the team at Hopkins with me were from south Florida, and we would always joke that taking that flight from a sunny warm vacation with family, back to the grind of university and practice was always the hardest thing we did all year.
This year I didn’t get a chance to go home for the holiday. We didn’t take a trip to the warm beach some where. My family took the trip to come visit me. We spent Christmas in London, and then they all came back to Galway to see me play a game with Moycullen on the 28th. It was my parents first time in London and we got to see all the awful touristy stuff that London has to offer. It was cold and rainy the whole time, and we couldn’t even see Big Ben, because renovations had scaffolding covering every square inch of it besides the actual face of the clock. Coming back to Galway didn’t give us any relief from the weather; the only difference was that it is much windier here in Galway. We took a day trip out to the Cliffs of Moher and it was so foggy that you couldn’t even see the ocean at the base of the cliffs.
So this year I didn’t have a flight back to the cold world of university; I was basically cold and wet the whole time. But, let me tell you, that didn’t make seeing my family leave any easier. We might not have been on a beach in the Caribbean, but we laughed, danced, ate, and drank like we were the whole time. We were cold and wet, but we were together as a family and that was all that mattered to us. Even though our time together was incredibly short again this year, the time we had we made the most out of. It was so good to get a chance to see my family and celebrate the holiday (and a big Moycullen win in our game on the 28th!) with them. Even though it was their turn to get on a flight back to work and school this year, it wasn’t any easier for me to see them go.
I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday as much as we did!