It's never the changes we want that change everything.
-- Lola

Importance: These are the first words of the story and plainly state what the opening scene is intended to illustrate and what the story is all about: life-altering transformation. In this opening recollection, Lola displays her mature understanding of her life's recent events with the philosophical perspective and level-headedness acquired during her time with her abuela. The effect of her ironic certainty is to foreshadow the upheavals of Mami's illness, during which the two will exchange wishes for each other's death that Lola now admits she never meant. Although Lola is still alienated from her mother, and love remains unexpressed between them, she might have once taken some secret glee in Mami's suffering that she now realizes was just her clinging to spite.

You don't know how or why you know this thing, but that you know it cannot be doubted. It...
-- Lola