The Ordinary Day

This day should feel special.  There should be an of aura of importance marking our every action.  But, there isn't.  It's just turning out to be an average day, a typical day, an everyday, even though it happens to be Reese's last day of summer before she goes to kindergarten.  We've had a typical breakfast, a typical snack, and we're currently having a typical afternoon.

It's probably better this way.

Even though Reese knows that something different is on the imminent horizon of her little life, she really can't grasp all that it entails.  Starting school gets the ball rolling.  Tomorrow she'll ride the bus for the first time, and then we'll blink and she'll be learning fractions, memorizing state capitals, writing essays, attending middle school dances, asking for the car keys, taking calculus, and turning her tassel from the right to the left before she tosses her cap in that arms-wide-open-to-all-that-life-has-to-offer manner that eighteen-year-olds embody.

Then I'll open the first college tuition bill, and maybe, just maybe, I'll remember that there once was a very ordinary day when I got my first packet of information from Reese's elementary school, a packet that that outlined new processes like buying school lunches and writing excuses for absences, a packet that she doodled on with a freshly-sharpened pencil as she sat entirely unselfconsciously in my lap, slipping her little hand into my own.

So even if today remains entirely ordinary in every other regard, I'm always going to try to remember it.

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