Today is the first day of school. Watching kids from the living room getting on their busses, anxious or upset of what awaits them today. Sure, they know it’s nothing to worry about, it’s just another day. Their parents are either overjoyed at the break, or saddened by being home alone. This just brings us back to the normal day we’ve all grown used to, whatever that means.

Even more than that, today is the first day of construction on the house. New kitchen, a new bathroom, another new reason I keep my Excedrin next to my computer. Everything is in its own sort of disarray today. That’s the purpose of first days; a new beginning that will hopefully bring better things to come. Hopefully a better, more functioning house will come out of all this hassle. Though, it makes me both sad and uncomfortable that something that lasted so long is being so easily destroyed. Sometimes it’s hard to forget a house is really just wood and metal that can easily be  left in shambles with such little effort.

Kids are the same way. It doesn’t take much to make them crumble to nothing but tears. The first day of school is powerful enough to do it. All it takes is on bad kid at school on the first day to ruin the year for them. Then their hopes of a fresh new start get ruin. But like the remodel, all you can do is hope that it ends up better than it was before. They can reinvent themselves in however and whatever they want to, and hope that the fresh start was worth it. We always assure them it is.

That’s what we always tell ourselves anyways. “It has to get worse before it gets better”. I never really liked that saying. Why? Because generally things go not just from worse to better, they go through different grades of worse than worse all the way to better, in the best case scenario. Worst case scenario? It goes from those varying degrees of awful all the way to a little better than it was before, it at all. But at that point, it’s “just a little better”. At least if you’re going to an awful you never want to see, you want something fantastic after all of it.

Now, this leaves me to the part where my kitchen and bathroom used to exist. Really, it’s the main point of this whole story. A new beginning is good for all of us. The first day of anything, brings you to a fresh and hopefully better start. The excitement and anxiety make things a little shaky at first, but if nothing else, a little change does a lot of good either way. And really, what’s the worst that can happen? I’ve learned a long time ago that sometimes you just need to make the best of things. Why not? You can’t change the past. But, you can always make your future. You just need that first day.