This Is How It Always Is

by Laurie Frankel

She felt that people who needed to do it upside down and backward from behind—or who added candied bacon or smoked sea salt or pieces of raw cookies to their ice cream—were probably compensating for a product that was inferior to begin with.

In fact, how was an easier question than why. How was the same answer as it is for all impossible things you do anyway. One day at a time. One foot in front of the other. All for one and one for all.

He had a policy at the time never to say no to new and potentially peculiar experiences in case he needed things to write about later.

Penn was a student of narrative and knew that lovers should be wooed, relationships fought for, that anything too easily won was soon lost or else not worth winning.

What was the same always outweighed what rotated and rostered and changed.

children being the enemies of plans and also the enemies of anything new besides themselves.

“You cry and then you feel better. Your owie stops stinging. Your feelings get less hurt. Sometimes you feel sad or scared, and you hear a sad or scary story, and then you feel less sad and less scared.”

How did you teach your small human that it’s what’s inside that counts when the truth was everyone was pretty preoccupied with what you put on over the outside too?

“Easy is nice, but it’s not as good as getting to be who you are or stand up for what you believe in,” said Penn. “Easy is nice, but I wonder how often it leads to fulfilling work or partnership or being.”

“All life. You are never finish, never done. Never become, always becoming. You know? Life is change so is always okay you are not there yet. Is like this for you and Poppy and everyone. The people who do not understand are change. The people who afraid are change. There is no before and no after because change is what is life. You live in change, in in between.”