Change is good. At least, that’s what you’ve heard. Still, you suspect some restrictions apply.
Change is good on the bus. Even with the fare increase, exact change is still required. Unless you are willing to sacrifice two dollar bills to the $1.75 fare.
Change is unequivocally good in the litter box and nursery. Change is always good for socks and underwear and even, under duress, hair styles.
Change is, if not good, necessary for tires. Especially if the occasion is far from the attentions of the gas station or Good Samaritan. You may prepare for this change by studying the owner’s manual and developing a working relationship with the tire iron and the mini spare. In the course of a driving career, this change will come.
Change is a good for water filters. For the murky conditions surrounding fresh mozzarella. And, on occasion, the elected.
The change of mind is handy, offering swift exit from the unfortunate conviction. The change of heart, though perhaps regrettable, cannot be denied.
Change is good for batteries, especially the kind wired to a device that, no matter how low on electrical charge, continues to yell for help. Change, the incessant beep translates, is good.
Change is good for sheets, the stamp machine, traffic lights and seasons. And in those foreign outposts that refuse, for obscure reasons, to accept dollars. Change is good for the piggy bank.
Change is unattractive in parents. Inconvenient in hemlines. And unacceptable in fine complexions.
Change ushers milk toward yogurt and yogurt toward cheese and cheese toward unadulterated mold, a progression whose metaphoric content is best left undisturbed.
Change, foisted on those assigned to grow up, is inevitable.
And so you submit to change. You hope that your new recipe, which calls for a cup of optimism and a teaspoon of regret, yields something delicious. That the home cook can stir unlikely ingredients into a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.
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Editor’s note: We bid farewell to Leah Eskin’s “Sum” column, but don’t worry: She will move to the Magazine’s food pages on May 2.
