This has happened twice recently: I'm having a conversation with a friend and then I'm hit by the distinct feeling that we've said all this before. The moment has all the hallmarks of deja vu until, I realize, we have indeed had that exact conversation already.
There was the conversation about seeing tarantulas in the foothills I had with Erik last week at the park -- and that I'm pretty sure I had with him last time we were both at the park a couple of weeks previously.And then there was the discussion of play-centered learning I had with Kathy at a recent nursery school potluck -- one I soon realized was an almost word-for-word repeat of our conversation the last time we spoke back before the summer break. Both incidents had common characteristics that I think help explain them. Both were conversations with the parents of young children, like me. Both were with people I only get to chat with infrequently. And both occurred while said children were under our care. Along with its many pleasures, the parenting life brings with it the phenomenon of the fractured conversation. When we get to hang out with people we like and our kids are with us, we hardly ever get to follow a thread of discussion to its natural conclusion. Plus we're most of us pretty tired most of the time. Put together the distraction, the sleep deprivation, the low-stakes nature of most of what we choose to talk about when in each other's company, and you have recipe for deja vu that isn't.In a sense, these conversations attain their deepest meaning not in their content but in their form. They are rituals of friendship, perhaps, more than anything -- rites that bind us as friends and tell us that we are not alone in our parenting journey. If that's true, maybe saying the same thing over and again is the ritual at its most refined!