Changing Faces

This evening we finally bought the dining table. Yes, now we have a place to dump our things on when we get home and a place to leave mail to pile up unopened :) 

Just as we were leaving the shop, I picked up a pretty cushion that I thought would go well with the tangerine wall in our hall; and D said wistfully, "We should have kept the old cushions and not given them away. I could have kept them in the car and when we drive up to Malaysia the girls could use them to nap." I looked at him incredulously. Truly, I think in his mind, my daughters haven't grown up. They are still 10 and 6, curling up each in one corner of the car, or one in the lap of the other, asleep on the pillows we bring with us on our road trips while he drives. 

But our next road trip is not going to be the same. We will not even all fit into the car, and if we decide to drive up to Malaysia, we would probably have to hire a 7-seater SUV. My family has grown - older and bigger. My family has changed - we eat different food, we speak English rather than Tamil, we take turns to watch different programmes on TV, we have different rhythms to our days. 

Come July, my family sitting round the dining table will be different from my family that sat around our old one when we first moved into this apartment in 1998. I pray, in deep ways, it will still be the same.