Cage Free Monkeys

Welcoming our House Guest: Change

It's 5am and my doorbell rings.

Good Morning Change and welcome to your new home. Let me get your bags for you…you sure did seem to bring a lot of baggage with you.

As Change moves into our home and gets comfortable I realize that he brought more with him than I was really expecting to deal with at one time. While his main suitcase is filled with my husband’s new job—you know the one located in Chicago, the Chicago that’s in another state, another time zone for that matter; he’s seems to have brought much more.

There’s the duffel bag stuffed with my neighbors’ and dear friends’ impending divorce. I was really hoping that he’d decide in the final moments not to bring that bag.

And on top of that is the small round case that has the moving of a dear friend, and it seems that this was more of a last minute item he packed for I really wasn’t expecting to see that suitcase here.

Laying on the floor is the small birthday package wrapped and addressed to me with the shiny numbers “36” written on them. Oh, I seemed to have forgotten that my birthday was amidst all of this baggage.

I open a dingy brown suitcase to find all of the elements that will put a toxic waste dump in my backyard—1850 feet from my home. The case is filled with petitions and letters, emails, and posters. (Maybe we can just stuff this suitcase in a closet for now?)

Sitting in the shadows in the corner is a book on peri-menopause. Why the hell did he bring that?? I am only 35—er, 36 years old!

In a clean new shiny pink suitcase there is a bunch of paperwork and leads on writing for magazines. Oh yeah, I forgot he was bringing that. I’m actually glad to see this suitcase.

Change settles in for the day and makes his presence know.

He isn’t that kind of houseguest that you rarely see and forget is there. The kind that is quiet and courteous and cleans up after themselves. He reminds us often that he has moved in; at dinner by demanding to sit in Pete’s chair at the table, he is in my yard as I glance over the melting snow at my neighbors’ house, he stomps further behind my house where I can glimpse through the leafless trees the place where the toxic dump is planned, and of course one of his most annoying habits seems to be making my kids sad. He doesn't seem to be completely satisfied until he makes one of them cry.

They really don’t want Change living here. They don’t really like him (Neither do I really but I need to keep that to myself). However, I explained that while he may have come in stiff and disruptive, we must give him a chance. A chance to show he really isn’t that bad at all, maybe even misunderstood. He could be a great friend, eventually.

We just need to be patient.