There is a song by The Wallflowers with the same title, and the lyric that accompanies it goes:
The only difference that I see
Is you are exactly the way that you used to be
I always wondered why it was the catchier lyrics (in my head, anyway) that always had to be the most meaningless ones. Jakob Dylan was trying too hard to be clever like old Dad and missing the mark, I thought. (I never thought Bob made the mark that much either, though, truth be told.)
Today, however, that line makes perfect sense to me. As I was covertly skimming the parenting section of a board I frequent, I came across some posts on baby updates and noted that, once again, there were babies who, at a year old, were weighing roughly about the same Houdini was at two and a half years old. That's not all; there was, of course, the update that tends to be the one that stands out even more than the others, about a baby half Houdini's age, who weighs five pounds more than he does.
I won't lie, I still read those posts with a little pang of sadness, but that was it. Okay, there was a a little relief mixed in there, because my friend Tornado's six and a half year old son weighs only a couple of pounds heavier than the 16 month old. The relief wasn't that I felt better at knowing there was someone dealing with feeding issues and allergies on a similar scale as Houdini--although there definitely is a heightened, comparative sense of 'there for the grace of god, go I' among parents of children with physical and mental issues (but that discussion will have to wait). No, I felt relief, because I know Tornado's son and he is an active, hugely imaginative, fluently bilingual, and precocious kid who, despite the myriad of things he's had to go through, is doing just fine. For all intents and purposes, I basically read those posts, noted the mental comparison to Houdini's weight (old habits die hard), then shrugged it off as I do a post on the cooking forum (interesting, but not central to my life).
Last year this time, the sadness would have been a whallop, not a pang. Last year, I would have felt each of those additional pounds like physical blows to my heart. Last year, I would have thought for hours about those posts, brought them up tearfully to Lemel and my parents, and then mulled over the numbers obsessively for days.
Not anymore, though. And, to paraphrase Jakob Dylan, the only thing that's changed, the only difference that I see, is that I am exactly the way I used to be.
