Sometimes change is easy to see in yourself, for instance when you change jobs, get married, start school, or move.

Mostly, it’s very hard to notice, which is why old people often say with surprise, “There used to be a police station here, until it was a Whole Foods, and now it’s a Target,” and by “old people” I mean me. My adult kid used to get cheerfully exasperated with me when we were out together and I did that, until they turned 40 and started doing it themselves.

But that’s me noticing change in the world, not change in me, because of course I have that little narrator in my head who assumes continuity of personhood, never mind Heraclitus’s river or the ways in which the atoms and cells of our bodies are completely replaced from time to time. Never mind that there was a time when I was shaped entirely differently and didn’t need glasses, and could fall down without hurting myself. I’m the same person, my conscious brain insists. It’s everything else that has become different.

It requires doing something exactly the same way once a year to notice that I have changed, and by that I mean going on vacation to my favorite shore town with my little family.

Some of the change is physical, and it’s not unwelcome. My kid informed me that they chose a different condominium this year because it had fewer stairs, so my knees wouldn’t suffer as much as they did in the old place.

My knees do not actually hurt, I told them. Until I thought about it, I don’t think I realized my knees have ever been painful. And while I was thinking about that, my right leg, which for much of the past year has been a welter of nerve pain from my hip down to my lower leg, also does not hurt.

My shoulder is a mess, mind you. The shoulder pain has been going on for months, and I am trying various workarounds to stop aggravating it. At my age, overuse pain goes away very, very slowly, until one day it doesn’t hurt any more and never did, until it’s a year later and you suddenly realize it used to be different.

The other change is subtler, and I noticed it when I stood up from the dinner table last night and started rinsing dishes in the sink preparatory to putting them in the dishwasher. My kid and son-in-law do not have a dishwasher and never have had one, so they were hesitant, so I briskly took over the task.

No, I noticed that particular change earlier, the day before when I insisted on paying for dinner out, or maybe yesterday morning when I took the grandchild out for a long walk and then paid for lunch for his father and him, without making a fuss.

You see, apparently, I am back to being a person who does things. I am no longer someone who, having buried my husband and then my favorite cat, was preparing to die myself. That sounds dramatic. It isn’t. It’s just that I had settled all my affairs, tidied the house, gotten everything organized, and, because my family insisted on bringing me along on their vacation, I was going along with the enterprise, just to be agreeable.

This passive, sad self is not, apparently, the kind of person I am any more, at least for now.

I rather like the feeling.

I have several women who ask me for advice, and often they are asking me about grief. I tell them you feel the way you feel, that everyone is different, and that you have to name it for what it is and stop trying to make it go away by sheer power of will. I say it takes time. I tell them to forgive themselves.

They take my advice, just because it’s someone else telling them, just because they can’t trust the unreliable narrator in their heads who is telling them it goes on forever and ever and they will never feel okay again.

I should remember to tell them to check again in a year, when they’re doing something every year, and notice if they still feel the same way they did last time.