Carrie Link

WINDS OF CHANGE

Went to Safeway yesterday (note to self: Get Safeway to flippin' sponser this blog), and hadn't been there in over a week. It had changed. Significantly. It's been in the process of a major remodel, but in the week I was absent the entrance moved, the carts are in a different place, the little post office inside is on the other side now, and they added a Starbucks! I go grocery shopping at peak older population times, so it was me and the LOLs. They were not happy.

"Miss! Can you help me find __________" I heard many times.

"Crap!" one particularly spicy older woman said, "I'm so damn tired of them moving everything! I can't find anything!"

People were complaining to their shopping partners, they were complaining to the Safeway employees, and many were complaining to themselves, (or God?) out loud.

Change is hard. And so inevitable. And just when we get used to the "new" it changes again. Every. Time. And maybe it's easier to complain about the changes at our local grocery store, than to deal with the changes in our personal lives, or bodies, or families, or, or, or...

Or maybe, the complaints of not being able to find anything, are just that, no hidden meanings, no deeper truths, simply people wanting to know where things are.

When I get going on my "I hate change" tirades, I try to remember how many "Why don't things ever change?" tirades I've had. When Rojo took "forever" to move out of the toddler phase, took "forever" to be potty trained, took "forever" to be left to his own devices, safely, for more than 2 seconds, I prayed up a storm that this would all change. And eventually it did.

And you know what that boy did yesterday? That 12-year-old rode a bicycle, no training wheels, just him and his developing balance and a bike.

That's change.

That's big change.

Maybe today I'll ride with him up to Safeway.