Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Same Old, Same Old

Happy New Year! (That goes double for the 2008 New Year, and also the Islamic New Year of 1429 that is celebrated tomorrow!) Blessings and peace to you for good health, fulfillment, and epiphanies throughout the new year.

I didn’t receive all that many Christmas cards in the mail this year—I’m not necessarily whining, I mean, where do you send a card to a guy in the desert when he’s not even there for Christmas. I am not leveling a criticism, just observing…but as I was checking through the cards and reading the newsletters I did get, I noticed something. I do read friends’ newsletters by the way (maybe because I send one and hope someone reads them?) and I always marvel at these cheery chronicles of the past year’s events (where, also I have noticed, seldom is heard a discouraging word) trying to catch everybody up on what is new in their lives. Well, two different friends, friends whom I am sure have never met, summed up their past year wielding that trusty idiom, same old, same old. One of the letters seemed a little melancholy, “as with the job, the kids, and the house, it’s the same old, same old.” The other letter assessed 2007 with this poetry: “There’s not much to say, the same old story, same old, same old.” That almost borders on Ebenezer Scrooge! But I have to admit I was a little jealous actually. I don’t think either newsletter correspondent aimed to spark any envy, but you see, for me, in the last 12 months, I don’t think I ever got to opine about the same old, same old. Nothing for me in 2007 was the same old, same old—from the first week in January when I met with the head of this soon-to-open school in Jordan, to tearing myself away from 11 years at Hackley and Manhattan, displacing my self, my psyche, my books, my ties, and turning everything upside down in my personal and professional life.

If you have read the blog entries, you know I have done exciting things, but one thing I haven’t gotten to do is indulge in the luxury of the tried-and-true, the same old, same old. That’s right—there’s a luxury in the same old, same old. I don’t believe either of my friends realized their luxury. Too often when we do the same thing over and over, the shopworn becomes prosaic and dull, but there is of course a great stability and continuity in that same old same old. Between the three-goat feasts, weekend trips to Cairo, Dubai and Riyadh, making sounds in Arabic that make German seem easy, re-imagining courses and bank accounts, figuring out how to keep up with American TV and American friends, hoping to understand the metric system, and wondering if I will any new friends in my new life, I could stand for a little same old same old!

So three weeks ago today when I set off for the United States, and my Christmas vacation, I didn’t quite know what to expect. Would it feel weird to be back in Ohio, to tramp through the streets of Manhattan? Would it feel surreal to have a glimpse at my old life? In the kaleidoscope of 2007, every movement shifted my sights and the scenes around me. What would it be like to be in the universe of same old, same old?

Guess what?! It was the same old, same old. And it was brilliant. And lovely. And comforting. And marvelous. My dad picked me up at the airport and we immediately went to the diner he visits 5 times a week, or as he calls it, “The Institution of Higher Learning.” I saw sassy Pam, the best waitress this side of hashed-brown heaven, and within minutes, it was like every other visit there. Hours later I went to pick up niece Emma and nephew Jack at school, and it was the beautiful same old, same old. The mail came, and like December clockwork, there was a package from my treasured friend Patti Bazzell Freeman, with another star for my Christmas tree—same old, same old, and it couldn’t have been better.

Over the next 16 days, the whole of my vacation, I don’t think I did anything “new” and I couldn’t have been happier. Every meal, every conversation was a jewel with old friends. And the beauty of same old, same old had never been sharper or more lustrous. Christmas Eve at our church was a study in tradition; sister Elizabeth and I performed, as we have every year since 1974. Same old, same old. I went to a play with Christy in New York—just like we had done hundreds of times from 1994-2006—same old, same old. The applause in the theater couldn’t match the applause in my head as I revisited my favorite haunts in New York. Throughout this vacation I was reminded of a quotation by Bertrand Russell: “It’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”

While in New York I spent time with two Hackley families on two separate nights, the Ungers and the Khosrowshahis. I might have worried that since our common bond of Hackley was gone, these visits might have been just merely pleasant, but our eating and talking was just like old times, a burnished, and precious same old, same old. These are not just friends of the road, but friends of the heart. These families are some of God’s finest masterpieces—models of faith, hope and love. In fact, I joked with my class the other day that the whole break was really just talking and eating, talking and eating, from Aunt Dot’s house, to Sylvia’s house, to the Cohens and on and on. Nothin’ new, just a perfect same old, same old.

In fact the eating component of my vacation was so fun, I think I’ll write about that in a separate entry in a day or two: a trip down Comfort Food Lane. Watch for that posting as I recount my best meals from the vacation!

When I left the Khosrowshahi house last Friday, it was time for my wondrous friend Anne to take me to the airport, where in an 11 hour direct flight, I would be whisked back to Jordan. Hmmm..what would that be like? After a season of almost blinding newness, how do you adjust again?

I come back, dragging my 140 pounds of suitcases across the Jordanian pavement, to the strains of “Welcome Home!” from the housekeeper for the headmaster. Hmmm…home. Yeah, I guess it is. The Jordanian Residency Card in my wallet suggests that certainly. Over the course of the next day, there was Zeina greeting me, “Hello Sunshine!” and Rehema laughing and Hamzah smiling and hugging me—wait, this was, wait, this was what I had come to love here. This was my new same old, same old!

Dragona, a math teacher friend, had a little party Sunday morning in the Math office—she had missed us so much she said, and she baked, and a group of us sat there, catching up. But it wasn’t that slightly nervous, here-we-go-into-the-brink-of-something-new laughter, it was the ease and comfort of friends you have known for a while—not forever, but enough to know you had missed them. Does it sound trite to want to call all of these nice patterns of life a same new, same new??

I go to get mail, and there is another of my favorite same old, same old signs—a Christmas card from the Canterino family. Margie Canterino’s card was always the first card I received every year. Before I left in December it hadn’t arrived yet—maybe she had forgotten me in the desert! But I see she mailed it on November 24—it’s just the mail in Jordan…takes awhile…but what a great reminder of a decade-old same old, same old. I went to lunch, and guess what the menu was? Lamb and Rice!! Say it together everyone: same old, same old!!!!!

By the end of Sunday I had slipped back into the comfy-as-a-slipper routine of life here at KA— I was off to the gym, and as I started to lock my door, the sight out my window arrested my attention. Ahhhh, yes, that glorious sunset over Madaba. So horizontal. So stunning. So biblical. So powerful.

It caught me off-guard, and I remembered. Oh yeah, here in Jordan, it’s just the same old, same old.

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