“I’m not going to be that kind of grown-up”
April 21, 2009 by Stephanie
Good morning!
I woke up about 45 minutes before the kids did today, and drank my coffee on the front porch. The sunrise was gorgeous—–every few seconds I thought, “I really should grab the camera,” but I didn’t. I just sat. It was lovely. By the time I snapped this picture, the kids were awake and the bright colors had disappeared.
The city has been repaving the street in front of our house, and will continue to work in the area for about another month. After 9am, the day is filled with the constant noise of heavy machinery moving and backing up. The whole house shakes, and the workers have to shout loudly in order to hear each other over the roar of the trucks.
It’s all very loud.
The quiet this morning was much-needed. I heard the garbage trucks a few blocks away, and even the garbage truck sound was soft and kind of comforting. I enjoyed my quiet time so much, I didn’t bother to go back inside to heat my coffee—I didn’t want to step on a squeaky floor board and risk waking the children.
It’s been warmer than normal the past few days—the kind of warm where you need to close the house up during the day and open it up at night. While I’m typing, the computer clock says 6:42 am, and I know that I should really get up and close the front door and the windows. I kind of like the routine of closing up the house and opening it again—-it sort of feels like a rebirth each day. I love releasing the stale house air and exchanging it for fresh when the sun sets.
Last week it was cold and windy.
super cold and windy.
And this week is hot—some would say really hot. Uncomfortably hot.
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Walking home from school last week, the kids and I were talking about turning into grown-ups, and the different responsibilities grown-ups have, and all that being a grown-up entails.
My seven-year-old muttered something about how grown-ups complain a lot, and my four-year-old quickly chimed in (she didn’t even miss a beat!) “yeah. about the weather.”
lol, your kids are cute.
I am “adult age” but don’t feel like an adult yet. I have a toddler, but still don’t feel like an adult. I’m married, but that feels like Jr. High love (because I knew him in Jr.H lol). I don’t think I will “feel like an adult” until I finish college and get an adult job–although since I was 20 I’ve had “adult jobs.” *shrugs.* My hubby is a grown-up, cause he complains a lot about the weather. lol.
Melissa, I’m 35, been married for 16 years and have 8 children. I still don’t feel like an adult. I was having this very discussion with my husband who said the same. Then I went into town and went to the Benefit cosmetic counter – the young girls who worked on there totally ignored me. Obviously I am old on the outside, lol
Out of the mouths of babes!
Sometimes that quiet is exactly what you need.
Lovely picture, even if you didn’t capture the sunrise at its best.
Cute kids … they are so right!
Shirley
Melissa,
Your comment really struck me. What does it take to feel “like a grown up” – and does anybody ever get there? Or is that the big secret? Maybe our parents never felt like grown ups, either. I’m 35 too, and recently I’ve been reconnecting with people on Facebook whom I’ve not seen since I was 17 – more than half my life ago! I look at pictures of their kids who look so much like they did at that age (I grew up in a small town where my graduating senior class was mostly comprised of kids I went to preschool with) that I am breathtakingly, heartachingly, transported back through space and time.
Then I look at pictures of my classmates, all grown up, and I can still see the little kids in them. They don’t look like “real grown ups” the way strangers on the street do. I don’t have a problem identifying someone my age on the street as “an adult” and even thinking of them as a “real grown up” – with all the boring daily grind that title grants them. But when I look at my former classmates, I see little kids playing dress up – wearing their parents’ clothes and hairstyles and glasses – carrying their Dads’ briefcases or posing behind the steering wheels of their Moms’ Volvos.
It’s not as jarring with the friends I’ve kept in touch with, or the college friends I’ve continued to see on a daily basis in my new small town. But I have to admit, I don’t think of my regular crowd of peers as “real grown ups” either – even when we’re having a backyard BBQ and those of us in our 30s are outnumbered by the under-12 crowd! Is this a wacky form of denial of the loss of our own youth? Or is there some secret rite of passage that will make us “real adults” in our own eyes?
I think part of the answer lies in seeing the differences, finally, between ourselves and the emerging younger generation. I feel more like a “real grown up” when surrounded by today’s 20 year olds than I ever have when attending a peer’s wedding or the birth or Baptism of a child. I just don’t quite view the world, or time, or drama, in quite the same way as I used to – and I realize this when I see the local college students slowly taking over our places in this town. Casually dominating the bars and coffee shops and pizza and tattoo parlors (we have so many of each that a visiting author of popular mysteries once commented that if he were to set a book in my town, the murder would take place in one or the other) we once occupied, they have relegated us to the back tables, less seen from the entrance, and the earlier appointments for body art – conveniently on the way home from work and before the kids need to be picked up from daycare.
The focus has changed – what they’re barreling toward, we’ve already found. And, finally, the realization comes that I am okay with that.
My 8 year-old daughter recently told me that when she was a grown-up, she”did not want to have so much hard times. You know, like divorce, figuring out if your child has allergies, having bankrupt…I just want to have some kids and enough money to decorate.” I am thankful to say we are not in the middle of so much hard times right now, but obviously we are surrounded by many people who are. Being a grown-up is just hard. Thanks for posting today. Enjoyed my crock pot mac and cheese this week. It was the third time I’ve made it and it is different every time, but I always love it!
Interesting conversation going on here. . .I DO talk about the weather a lot (and am only 2 yrs older then you Steph) so does that make me old??? I just *love* good ol’ sunshine and try very hard to be happy and acknowledge it when I see it!!! But in all seriousness, I had an overwhelming sense of “grown-up” when my first child was born and all of a sudden I looked at my mother and MIL and “got it”. . .y’know??? “Wow, I am going through what THEY went through” . .and boy, did we (my DH and I) make it HARD on them sometimes — lol. It’s really not so bad being a grown-up though. . .I substitute teach and see what the “kids today” are going through (broken homes, an over-bearing media, etc) and do not envy them. . .glad I had the growning-up time I did. Our kids have a lot ahead of them. And yes, reconnecting with friends on FB is so much fun. . .it does transport you to another time. . .a more carefree time, yet now you know what the future brings. . .it brings us to here. . .and just b/c we see lines in the mirror doesn’t mean that those lines have to be inside us!!!