Change

"Things change." It's such a hard thing to learn at such a young age. Just like, "Nothing stays the same." My older sister is resigned to accept the idea that things change. She was the oldest. She'd been through it before. I'm upset, but not hysterical. The middle of the learning curve. My poor little brother is just beginning his initiation into the cruel world of "Grown-ups Rule Disappointment" and "Fun Doesn't Last Apathy." As I said, it's really much too heavy a lesson for such a small person. I suppose it's good most people don't remember the lesson, but learn the rule.
For me, I didn't forget the lesson - not one.

Some of them I embraced. As a percentage of the whole, hardly any, I believe that I remember more of the pleasant times than the bad ones. Or I might also say that I'd rather remember the pleasant - so I tend to dwell  on those as opposed to the latter. Who wouldn't?
There were plenty of hard lessons that were no fun at all. Why concentrate on those?

On the day this photo was taken, my brother, sister and me - along with some neighborhood kids, set up our own flower stand. You know how most kids construct lemonade stands? Well, we made a flower stand. We got empty peat planting pots and used plastic flower flats from the barn and filled them with dirt. We picked Dandelions and packaged our own flowers. We sold Pussy Willow Trees too. We also set up a table at the street so that people could buy our lovely flowers. In retrospect, I don't think we actually believed anyone might. We were just playing a game. We were little entrepreneurs. We had no idea that our hard earned business, our precious time and our spectacular merchandise would have to be summarily destroyed when it was time to come in for the night. We hadn't learned yet that things change. But that's how our Dad was. He probably told us to clean up and come in and we probably didn't want to. So, he helped. Granted his way of helping was to accomplish the task as quickly and with as little discussion as possible. He dumped out our flowers, stacked the containers, folded the table and everything we had worked so hard on was gone in less than a minute and without the slightest apology.
We hadn't yet learned that 'Things Change.' We did that day.