In that split second, I felt like the world around me was moving in fast forward. Life in motion, me sitting still. Moments like these bring to the forefront of my mind the glaring reality that I am a grown-up. Some educated dude I had just met was asking me if it was okay to poke and prod and yank at a child's mouth, removing a tooth and cutting up some gums. Asking me! How in the world did I get here? How is it that I hold the weight of that decision -and so many others- in my hands?
Times like these (which happen more often than I should probably admit) make me feel emotionally naked. I fear that the person I'm talking with can see into my soul and is chuckling to themselves, "Look at her, a kid pretending to be an adult! Who let her in?"
I know it didn't happen all at once. Little by little, adulthood grows on you. Some of us start earlier than others, with it thrust upon us when we are yet children through the circumstances of our young lives. Some of us fight it into our 40's. But eventually, whether we like it or not, we grow up.
We pay bills. We stress about committees. We do yard work. We tie the knot. We have kids. We get used to our hands being puked in or pooped on. We have cats. We suck it up and dig the hairballs out of the drains. We deal with the IRS...
Other than the whole cat thing, I've done all of that.
My husband and I have been married for over a decade, and have five children. I would say that we certainly qualify as grown-ups. Yet with the birth of each child, I kept telling myself that I didn't feel grown up. Maybe I'll feel it when we finally buy a house, I surmised. That's what adults do. They buy houses.
So here we are, wading through the paperwork to close on a house.
Do I feel any more grown-up? Nope.
Stressed out? Yep.
Maybe it's synonymous. Stressed Out = Grown Up
I certainly hope not, because if that's the case, hypertension is in my near future, and my fingernails will be a thing of the past. My children will grow up to hate me and eventually refuse to grow up themselves for fear of becoming as stressed as their mother, therefore causing me more stress and creating a vicious cycle and some seriously daunting therapy bills. I can see it all, and it isn't pretty.
Okay, rewind. What I said before, about that feeling in the dentist office...am I the only one? Do you ever get that feeling when you're in the middle of big decisions, or even everyday life? Can you feel your 10 year old self, still tangibly present inside you, and it seems to be more who you are than the grown-up that the world thinks you've become?
I look back at my childhood and wonder if my parents, and parents of friends, and Sunday school teachers, and elementary school teachers, and all those people that seemed so very big and important at that time... Did they feel that way? Did they look in the mirror at the end of the day and wonder what they were doing, and how they ended up being responsible for so much?
I have to assume that the answer is yes. *If you disagree with me here, and have never experienced this phenomenon, you are not allowed to tell me. I do not want to know. Shh. Seriously. Shhh. *
When I wake up in the morning, five small people need me. FIVE. That's still such an unreal, crazy number. Five persons who need me to feed them. Teach them. Discipline and guide them. Every thing that I do is sopped up by their little brains and turned into stock photos of what a grown up looks like. I am their main reference for "functional adult human being".
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
So, yes. Obviously, a grown-up.
I was thinking though, that it's probably good to keep a bit of that 10 year old around. Me, back then -though thoroughly confused by the world- hadn't yet crossed the threshold into a place of false pretenses and self-importance. There was still imagination and wonder, a willingness to receive correction and an understanding that I didn't know much of anything. That's the beauty of being only a decade out of the womb: you're free to be real about knowing so little, and therefore, free to learn faster and ask more questions without fear of reproach.
Imagination - Humility - Fearlessness
None of those qualities seem like a poor lot to keep in your back pocket. That and maybe some jacks, your lunch money, and a sparkly gel pen...for signing really important documents.
