Le plus ca change

Le plus c'est le meme chose.

But maybe it would be more accurate to say (I can't do this bit in French) the more we scurry about, rearranging them to stay the same.

Things change.
I was talking to someone a while ago and it suddenly hit me that this is one of the truths that I've known since I was very small. My family moved twice when I was quite young and there was a large rearrangement of my life required. I wasn't old enough to do a great deal of rearranging to suit myself so the changes were far-reaching for me. One of them happened just as I was about to start School - which I loathed, hated and feared with all the passion a five year old can muster. Quite a lot! But demonstrated it quietly, obstinately and in passive ways. There wasn't the space in our life for me to do tantrums or throw fits of rage or run screaming to hide in cupboards. I hadn't learnt to read and hadn't read stories about children who agreed with me so running away from the unbearable - and home - didn't occur as a solution. Besides, I did know that mummydaddy would be hurt if I didn't do the required thing. So I did it. But with very bad grace.

Later moves introduced new schools and new lives in new places. They were precipitated by my Father's illnesses which were the typical ones that attend a portly, elderly Doctor who works too hard, exercises too little, smokes like a chimney and eats and drinks too well. Heart, stomach, cancer (only a little one in his jaw but very distressing for him all the same) and lastly, arterio-sclerosis. Each one involving changes for all of us.
It's small wonder my Mum had depression, for much of our lives it was her task to orchestrate the changes and manage the problems they brought and she was a woman who should have been nurtured and cherished in security if ever there was one. And, again typical of so many woman with professional husbands, it was her job to make it seem that all the responsibility was carried by a faultless husband. A man thirty years her senior who was, himself, baffled by her sadness and my recalcitrance. And both of them were dead by the time I was twenty (ish - I'm not good with dates)

What it all meant for me was that by the time I reached adulthood I knew that life is subject to change. No place, no person and no arrangement is dependable. Other people might have time to form deep and lasting relationships but I would probably not. Roots are fragile and easily torn up. Trees fall and reeds wilt. And let's be fair, I am likely to abandon anyone who looks like changing a lot.

So I rarely 'fall' into any relationship but every so often I find myself 'choosing' one. Thinking, yes, this person I will try to stay connected to whatever happens. And that means however much they change, however far they travel and whatever they do.
Oddly, the selection process is impulsive and intuitive though the decision to keep the connection alive is calculated. I'm happy with that.
Not so happy with the certainty that change is waiting round many corners to undo all my calculations and deprive me. Which is why it's odd that the beauty of the world is a constant solace and a thing on which I utterly depend. Change is constant in the views I watch. Change threatens all the time and amazingly, every change brings beauty. We are warned of unimaginably large changes that may come to the world we know and while it scares me, I still, selfishly, hope that there will be something newly wonderful for me to see.