My parents weren’t the nurturing type and so I had my first adult moment when I had to pay $400 to have my impacted wisdom teeth removed. I was 17.
Then the next year when I was talking about my plans of moving out of my parent’s house my boyfriend asked if they were going to let me keep my car. I was very proud to tell him that they didn’t so much as co-sign for the car. It was all mine.
So I’ve felt like an adult for a long time but I do have moments when I am amazed that I’m old enough to be married and, WOW, have a ton of kids. When did that happen? Celebrating 19 years next month and have four ankle biters.
Here’s one of the more recent. As I was getting my hair washed by a young woman before getting it cut, I realized I was old enough to be her grandfather. And I haven’t quite hit standard retirement age.
When I was around 40, I visited a cousin a few years younger than me and his family. Their kids were around 5, and I had last visited before the kids were born. While my cousin and his wife were out of the room getting dinner ready, the kids and I were in the living room. When I was talking to them and just watching them, I noticed they were watching me a bit cautiously because I was The Adult and they were not quite sure how to behave with me and were looking to me for cues.
My thinking was- when you’re a teenager or kid, a toilet brush is pretty much a joke item, and a clean one is usable for ‘hilarious’ costumes and practical jokes (though I did use them for their intended purpose as a kid when necessary); when you’re adult it’s something you buy, because, you know, the toilet needs cleaning, and no-one else is going to do it, and it’s not a funny object any more.
I’ve had a lot of them (mortgage WHA?, getting on a plane to a foreign country alone, etc.) but these days it’s been really weird for me to try to get used to saying “husband”, as in “my husband”. Husbands are something other people have! They require, like, a lot of maintenance and it’s hard to get parts for them!
My first one came when I had my daughter and was in the recovery room after my C-section. It hit me that I was now responsible for an actual person, and my actions would determine her future. I remember thinking, “Oh shit, this is for real. I’m a mom. I’m a grown-up.”
I had another one earlier this year, shortly after my mother passed away. My mother usually did most of the cooking, and dinner was ready shortly after I came home from work in the evenings. After the funeral, several relatives had stayed with us for the first few days, and they did most of the cooking. After they left, I remember thinking, “I’m hungry. What’s for dinner?” and then realizing that I was the one who had to cook dinner or else no one in the house was going to eat that night.
LOL! Or as my dearly demented & departed mom did: use it to brush her hair. (It was a new one, never used.) Humoring her and telling her what a Clever Bee! she was for finding that new use for a TOILET BRUSH! made me feel grown up. She did put up with a lot of weirdness from my sister and I growing up, after all.
I was a fresh-out and working my first job when I totaled my car on an icy road. The grown-up moment was when the insurance settlement came, and I realized that I didn’t need my mother’s permission to buy the replacement.
A good sort of grown up moment was during my internship. I was really stressed out on a work project and at one point my boss came by and looked it over and made suggestions. I suddenly realized that I wasn’t being graded on it. If it wasn’t right, I wasn’t going to get an “F.” I would get a chance to make it right AND it was alright to ask for advice or help from coworkers. It REALLY helped me adjust to life after grad school.
