Here are a few things I know about change…
Pocket Change: My wallet will be absolutely bursting with pocket change… until I’m in dire need of coins to feed the parking meter.
Change of Clothes: An absolute necessity when I travel out of town for a wedding, in case the dress I fully intended to wear suddenly no longer fits (clearly it must have shrunk…).
Change of Scenery: Moving my laptop from my home office to the dining room table because the office is so disturbingly messy I can’t bear to look at it anymore.
Change of Heart: Pretty much a given anytime my six-year-old daughter bats her big brown eyes and refers to herself in the third person as “Sweet Little Me.” (I’m a total sucker that way)
Change of Plans: Going out to a play one Friday night with my 90-year-old grandmother… then realizing a tiny sore on her arm looks a little red and swollen, and bugging out to the emergency room, just in case… then spending the entire weekend in the hospital battling a potential staph infection. (She’s fine, and we capped off the weekend with truly massive hot fudge sundaes, so that made everything better.)
Directional Change: What happens every time I go anywhere without the help of my GPS… even if I’m within a five-mile radius of home.
Career Change: The result of young-20-something me telling Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, the biggest TV producers at the time, “Thanks for inviting me back to work on your extremely high profile sitcom next year, but my fiance’s in L.A. and I’d rather be there than New York right now, so I’m going to say no, and assume that you’ll totally transfer this job offer to one of your shows over there, despite the fact that this was my first year on a sitcom staff and I should be kissing your butts for even recognizing I exist at all.” (Okay, I might not have said it in exactly that way, but I’m pretty sure that’s what they heard. Oddly enough, they never returned my agent’s calls when I moved back to L.A…)
Life Change: What happened the instant my daughter was born.
A Change is Gonna Come: Simple truth. My life is nothing like how I envisioned it twenty years ago… or ten years ago… or five years ago… heck, even in the last week there have been some major alterations in the landscape. Some of the changes have been incredible, others harder to swallow, but the wrenches in the works — both good and bad — definitely keep the ride interesting.
Oh, and the picture up top? That’s The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same. The picture is of my two grandmothers, Mom-Mom Eva and Mom-Mom Sylvia, 90 and 94. They’ve been best friends since their teens, and they’ve been through a world of changes over the years, including the marriage and ugly divorce of Eva’s daughter and Sylvia’s son, the loss of both their husbands, one of their children, and nearly all their old friends. But they’re still alive and well (knock wood), and when they get together and talk and laugh about the old days, it’s as if not a second has passed. Their presence in my life is something I’m incredibly grateful has not changed, and I’m beyond thankful for every day they’re here with me.
Two beautiful women – wow. Wait – make that three!
KIM
🙂 I actually have a RIDICULOUSLY cute picture of the two of them with my 6-y-o, their great-granddaughter. So special to get them all together.
That is an adorable picture! I can see where you get your charming good looks! 🙂
Tawna
Happy to take after such amazing women. Their husbands were no slouches either…
Now those are true “ladies.” And to have an adult relationship with your grandparents is priceless!
Last time I was in Philly I actually had a slumber party with Mom-Mom Sylvia. She’s in the same house she’s had since I was born, so it was wonderful and surreal at the same time. I kind of felt like I was five years old again.
Your 6 year old already calls herself “Sweet Little Me?” Ooooh boy, are you in trouble! I am too, Daniel was totally plotting up ways to trick us and get his own way when he was 10 or 11 months old. I’m afraid that now, at 15 months, he might already be smarter than either my husband or I, and we aren’t slouches!
Yeah,they get very crafty. When Maddie was 3 and in temper tantrum mode, we’d pick her up and carry her out of public places when she melted down, and she was savvy enough to scream out to the populace at large, “SOMEBODY HELP ME!!!!”
Thankfully we were always at a family-friendly place when it happened, so all the parents rolled their eyes instead of assuming we were kidnappers.
I LOVE that picture, and I think it is beyond cool that they have been friends for so long, even through the divorce.
And I totally thought of pocket change when I viewed this topic, too. Does that make us shallow, or clever?
Cleverly shallow, perhaps?
Loved this post, E. And, I’m laughing about your daughter’s reference to herself–“Sweet Little Me.” That is hysterical! They’ve got us so wrapped around their fingers, don’t they? xo