Same Old, Same New

A good breakfast, a carefully picked first day outfit, a few pictures, and a new school year begins. It is new, and yet oddly the same as so many years past. Each year comes with new moments, but we have done the dance so many times, we just know the steps. So, I wonder--have I missed something? Shouldn't there be bells and whistles, tears and cheers?

Sometimes, however, the big events turn out to be not as monumental as we anticipated them to be. Sometimes, if we have been present all along the way, our presence is all that is required. It's not that this event is any less important. It's simply that we are more equipped for it than we once were. And it's not that we should disregard it, having done it for so many years (after all, there's nothing like sending a child to college to remind me how we won't always have this yearly milestone). It's just that we meet it as more of an old friend rather than as a new acquaintance. We have been here (or close to here) before. And we can handle it.

So, we walk without wailing. We begin without bemoaning an end. We experience what is very much the same as it has been for so many years before, knowing that in reality, it is not the "same old, same old" at all.