I am participating in the 31 Days of Free Writes October challenge. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.

Today’s prompt: Change

“Don’t go changing to try and please me.”

“Just the way you are” by Billy Joel, which includes the line above, is one of my all-time favorite songs.

It came out around the time I took a class trip to New Orleans. You can tell this was a 70s class trip because we all crammed in a teacher’s car (it was a small group). These days, we would have had to sign five forms in triplicate, rent a bus and hire a driver to avoid liability.

Whatever the case, this song seemed to come on 20 times during the trip (I am sure this is an exaggeration of my middle-school memory).

I think — I’ve gotten to the point at 52 that I don’t feel *that* compelled to change to please others, but it is a lifelong quest to feel comfortable with ourselves — that we don’t have to change in order to please ourselves.

Wayne and I were talking the other day about the MAMMOTH job ahead of us of decluttering to list the house, and I said “despite how it looks (I am a terrible housekeeper and let clutter pile up), I hate clutter.” He said, “I just gave up at some point because I got tired of the dirty looks.”

Now, not to break down the Kiger marriage in five minutes, but we have each over 25 years done plenty of things worth getting a dirty look from the other.

Yet it still grieves me that in his head, the state of our house was driven primarily about my stubbornness and unwillingness/inability to change.

Take it away, Billy ….

Paula Kiger

Wife of one, Mom of two, Friend of many.