Chapter Eleven — The Entity of Change

A few days after I returned from the cruise, I went out for a walk in my neighborhood.

I chose my regular route, the one I have walked for years.

I did not need to think about where to turn. My legs knew the way almost on their own.

I passed the familiar houses, crossed the street, and continued toward the corner where a small bakery stood.

I loved passing it in the morning hours.

Sometimes the smell of fresh bread reached all the way to the sidewalk, and sometimes I would peek inside and see the trays behind the glass.

But this time the window was dark.

A sign hung on the door: "For Rent."

I stopped.

I had not known the bakery had closed.

I looked through the window and saw that the shelves were already empty.

I went on walking, and a few minutes later I noticed another change.

The large tree that stood beside the sidewalk, the one in whose shade I used to stop sometimes, was no longer there.

In its place remained a low stump.

I stood facing it and looked at the place where the branches once were.

I did not know why they had cut it down.

Perhaps it was sick. Perhaps its roots disturbed the sidewalk. Perhaps there was an entirely different reason.

But suddenly the street seemed more exposed to me.

A little further on, where there had been an empty lot, stood a new building.

Glass balconies, large windows, cars I did not know in the parking area.

I thought about how for years I had passed this street without giving it any special thought.

It was simply part of my life.

And now, after a few weeks in which I was not here, I felt for a moment as though I had returned to a familiar place in which someone had moved the furniture.

"So many things have changed," I said to myself.

And then another thought rose in me.

After all, I too did not return exactly as I had left.

⸻

I tried to imagine Change as an entity I could converse with.

But every time I tried to give it a face, the face changed.

For a moment I saw a young child, then an older man, then a woman whose face reminded me of someone I had known.

Even the clothes changed every time I looked at it.

"It is very hard to imagine you," I said.

"Why?"

"Because you do not stay as you are even for a moment."

"And do you stay?"

I thought about the question.

"No. But at least I do not change faces every few seconds."

"Are you sure?"

I smiled.

"If you mean that I change all the time, I know. But usually I do not feel it happening."

"When do you feel it?"

"When something makes me stop and compare. An old photograph, a person I have not seen for years, a place I return to after a long time."

I looked again toward the closed bakery.

"Or when something familiar suddenly disappears."

⸻

"I want to understand something," I said. "Why do changes surprise us so much, even when we know they are inevitable?"

"Perhaps because there is a difference between knowing something will change and seeing it change."

"For example?"

"You know children grow up. And yet, sometimes you look at them and wonder when exactly it happened."

I thought about that.

There are changes that occur so slowly that we do not notice them day to day.

We see the people close to us almost every day, and so the small differences escape our eyes.

But when we look at a photograph from a few years ago, suddenly everything is clear.

"So perhaps we are not truly surprised by the change," I said. "We are surprised that we did not notice it."

"Sometimes."

"But there are also changes that come all at once."

"True."

"And they do not always leave us time to get used to them."

The imagined entity looked at me with a face that kept changing.

"Do you think gradual change is easier?"

"Not always. Sometimes precisely a slow change is exhausting, because we see it happening and cannot stop it."

"So perhaps the difficulty is not only in the speed."

"Perhaps it is also connected to what we lose along the way."

⸻

I went on walking.

"There are changes I choose myself," I said. "Moving to another place, starting something new, changing a habit. They too can be hard, but at least I have the feeling that I take part in the decision."

"And what about changes you did not choose?"

"Those are much more complicated."

"Why?"

"Because sometimes I am forced to adapt to something I did not want in the first place."

"And do you always succeed?"

"Not immediately. And sometimes I do not want to adapt at all."

It did not answer.

"There are things I want to remain as they were," I continued. "People, places, periods in life. I know it is impossible, but the knowledge does not make me want it any less."

"So what do you do?"

"Sometimes I struggle. Sometimes I try to change the situation. And sometimes I have no choice but to go on living with what happened."

"And do you think every such change teaches you something?"

I pondered the question.

"No," I said at last. "I know people say that everything happens to teach us something, but I do not believe that. There are changes that simply hurt. I would not choose them, even if I learned something from them in retrospect."

"And what nevertheless happens to you after them?"

"I change. Sometimes I become more cautious. Sometimes stronger. And sometimes a sensitive place remains in me that was not there before."

"So not every change necessarily makes you a better or stronger person."

"Exactly. But it still becomes part of me."

⸻

I reached the stump that remained of the tree.

I sat down for a moment on a nearby bench.

"You know," I said, "I do not long only for the tree itself."

"What else?"

"For the place it created. For its shade. For the feeling I had when I sat beneath it."

"And that place is no more."

"True."

I looked at the street.

The tree was a very small part of the neighborhood, and yet its absence changed the whole view.

"Sometimes one thing changes, and suddenly everything around it looks different," I said.

"Like what?"

I thought of people who are no longer in our lives.

Of families that change when one of their members is missing.

Of a house that remains the same house, but the atmosphere in it is no longer like what it was.

"Like when a person is missing," I said. "All the others are still there, but their place remains felt."

The entity was silent.

I appreciated that silence.

I did not want to hear that everything makes room for something new.

Sometimes a place that empties remains simply empty.

⸻

"But you also bring good things," I said after a while.

"For example?"

"New beginnings. People we did not know. Opportunities that did not exist before."

"And do you think the good changes can be separated from the bad ones?"

"Sometimes yes. But not always while they are happening."

I thought of decisions I had made in my life.

There were some that seemed frightening at first, and only later did I understand how right I had been to choose them.

And there were also decisions I was certain of, but whose results were entirely different from what I expected.

"Perhaps one of our problems is that we want to know in advance where the change will lead," I said.

"And is that possible?"

"Only partially. One can plan, check, prepare. But something will always remain that we cannot know."

"So why do you go on choosing changes?"

I smiled.

"Because I do not want to live only inside what I already know."

I remembered the imagined girl I met in the port city.

The Entity of Curiosity.

She would surely have enjoyed this conversation very much.

⸻

"And what about me?" I asked. "How much have I changed over the years?"

"What do you see when you look back?"

"A woman who believed certain things and today thinks differently. A woman who feared things that no longer frighten her, but also discovered new fears."

"And what remains similar?"

I thought about that.

"I still love asking questions. I still want to see new places, understand people, write. There are things in me I recognize from childhood."

"So are you the same woman you were?"

"Yes and no."

It smiled.

"That is a convenient answer."

"That is the only answer I have."

I tried to think of a way to explain.

"I do not feel I became an entirely different person. But if I met myself of twenty years ago today, I am sure there would also be disagreements between us."

"And perhaps you would also learn something from each other."

"Possibly. I think I would want to ask her a few questions."

"And she you?"

"Probably many more."

I laughed.

⸻

"There is something that frightens me about change," I said after a while.

"What is it?"

"The possibility of changing without noticing what is happening to me."

"What do you mean?"

"I do not want to wake up one day and discover that I stopped doing things that were important to me, that I drifted away from people I loved, or that I became a woman I no longer recognize."

"And do you think that can be prevented?"

"Not entirely. But perhaps one can pay attention."

"How?"

"To stop from time to time and ask myself whether the life I am living still suits me. Whether I am choosing my way, or simply continuing out of habit."

"And what will you do if you discover you are no longer in the place you wanted to be?"

"Perhaps I will try to change something."

It smiled again.

"Meaning, you will use me in order to cope with me."

I laughed.

"Apparently I have no other way."

⸻

I rose from the bench and continued toward home.

"You know," I said, "perhaps that is one of the reasons I write."

"Which reason?"

"To remember what I thought in different periods. So that I can read something I wrote years ago and see how I changed."

"And what do you feel when you read your old things?"

"Sometimes I am surprised. There are thoughts I no longer agree with. And there are sentences I read and feel as though I wrote them yesterday."

"And does that bother you?"

"No. Quite the opposite. I love seeing the road I have traveled."

I thought of the book I had begun to write.

Every chapter in it was born of a thought that arose at a certain moment.

Perhaps in years to come I will read these conversations and answer some of the questions differently.

That possibility did not frighten me.

It made me curious.

⸻

I had almost reached home.

I passed the new building again, and looked at the balconies.

On one of them stood a woman watering plants.

A few years ago there was no house here.

And now someone was already living a whole life in it.

"I have one last question," I said to Change.

"I am listening."

"Is there anything that never changes?"

The imagined figure stopped.

For a moment it seemed to me that I saw my own face in it.

"What would you want not to change?" it asked.

I thought of the people I love.

Of the memories dear to me.

Of the things I still want to do.

"There are many things," I said.

"And do they truly need to remain exactly as they are in order to go on being important to you?"

I did not know how to answer at once.

Love can change without disappearing.

A bond can take a new form.

A person too can change and still remain dear to us.

But there are changes we will not want to accept, even if we have no way to prevent them.

"Perhaps not everything must remain the same," I said. "But I would like there to be things I can go on holding onto."

"And perhaps some of them will remain, even if in a different form."

I looked at it.

Its face had already changed again.

⸻

I went into the house and hung the keys in their place.

I made coffee and went to the window.

The house looked exactly as I had left it before the cruise.

The same furniture, the same objects, the same light entering from the window in the morning hours.

And yet, something in my feeling was different.

Perhaps because I had been far away for a while.

Perhaps because on the way back I understood how many things around me go on changing even when I am not there.

And perhaps because I too returned with new thoughts.

I took the cup of coffee and sat down.

I thought of the bakery that closed, of the tree that was cut down, and of the new building.

Tomorrow I will pass there again.

Perhaps I will no longer stop before each of them.

Not because I will forget how they looked before, but because slowly I will get used to the new sight.

The street will go on being familiar to me, even if it is not exactly the same street.

And I will go on walking in it, even if I am not exactly the same woman.

Continue to Chapter Twelve: The Entity of the Road

© 2026 Nurit Rozenblat. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed without the author's prior written permission.