As longtime Brazos Valley residents know, we’ve been taking the back streets the past two weeks now, and until after the first home game traffic settles back, you can count on our staying there. The annual ritual of Back-to-School brings yet another 1500 Aggies to the community, much to the delight of local business owners, who survive the summer to reach the thriving days of fall and summer.

It’s an exciting first weekend we just experienced, with the opening of the Summer Olympic Games in Paris, France. The week of the Olympics landed in the midst of a very busy series of news cycles that document world events and daily news. Good and bad news abounds, everywhere you look it seems. You just have to pick and choose what you want to let into your day. Yet, it’s important to be aware of the world around us, because the earliest displays of the lessons we teach our children revolve around how we respond to the ups and downs of life.

This is the day when we break out the red, white, and blue décor and display our pride in being Americans with the rest of our community, same as we do every year at this time. Across the Brazos Valley some of our neighborhoods are staging their own parades and parents have helped their children decorate their bike handles with streamers. Sound systems are playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever” as a parade route forms. Pedal cars are moving into position behind the four- and five-year-old drivers maneuvering into position. Electric cars driven by Batman or John Deere III slide into view.

Just looking at these two photos, separated by three decades, I’m overwhelmed to think of how it still just seems like yesterday that my dad was loading up the station wagon, ready to drive me and our soccer team all across the back roads of Texas as we competed across the state, trying our best to stand out.

Of all the women in our lives, mothers certainly hold a position of supreme love and regard that often are set far above others we hold dear in life. Mothers are, frankly, our first very best friends and throughout life, others may come close but there’s a place that only they can hold dear in our hearts.

In the past few weeks, I’ve heard from high school friends that two of our classmates had died. This is not uncommon by itself, but the surprise came as I learned that one of our classmates had died two years ago, and another some three months ago. Yet, not one person we knew in common had known of their passing before now, so none of us who grew up together had any idea that we’d lost two “of our own.” That meant sorrow upon sorrow at the delay in learning of their passing.

Just as excitedly as children rush from their beds on Easter morning to see what might be awaiting them in their Easter baskets from the Easter bunny, adults have reason to approach this blessed Sunday with similar enthusiasm. The promise of the memory of the stone that was rolled back, revealing an empty tomb brings to all of us the reminder that Christ rose from the dead and God took him back home to be with him. The victory of the resurrection is our guarantee as adults that we can celebrate each year.

Now that our son Rowen is two years old, Chelsea and I are beginning to introduce him to the elements of a regular church worship service that occur with regularity each year. True, one can only make a preliminary impression on a youngster with respect to helping him or her understand the rituals we as adults have grown up with, all of our lives. The occasion of Palm Sunday gives us a chance to help Rowen know that on Palm Sunday, we are going to be seeing everyone we know waving a large palm frond as we come into the church.