Today, I did my laundry, took my taxes to the post office to mail them (and promptly left because the line was nearly out the door), made my first successful omelet, called one of my parents to wish him happy birthday (on time!), turned in a paper that was due today, and am currently working on another paper I have due on Monday. Somehow, with all that I’ve accomplished by three p.m., I still got in a walk with Ace, a cup of tea, and wrote this entry. In the strange mix of grown up tasks and infantilizing schoolwork, I can now see that this is my version of adulthood.
I know I’ve blogged about this before, but it’s amazing to realize that I’m growing up. You know the saying that a watched pot never boils? Well, I’ve been waiting for my adulthood to “boil” since I was thirteen. And as soon as I looked away, that sucker hit 212*F (if adulthood is comprised of the same material as water, which I assume it is).
I’m not sure that this is exactly what I had in mind when I was daydreaming as a little girl, but perhaps, as my dear friend Ursula put it, there is not some “real life” out there waiting to be attained by me. I cannot continually imagine a far distant future and wait until I get there to be happy. Happiness is something deeper, more everlasting than that. Or maybe there is another term like “joy”, or “contentedness.” Maybe I should ask a Buddhist.
Whatever you call it, I think I have it. Or at least some version of it. That’s not to say that I don’t still worry (about bills, about school, about Ace’s ear infections) or that I don’t experience sadness (I’m still mourning the loss of my grandfather), but its something that lies beneath that.
A strange example of this was when I was speaking with someone about the death of my grandfather and my choice to miss a week of school. She said to me, “Well, you’re an adult. You’re making the choices that seem right despite the consequences because it is your education.” And, I agree. There is something about the death of my grandfather that has aged me markedly. In a real way, it’s as if his death has forced me to look at what I’m doing with my life and to ask: Why? This is a scary feeling. To think that I’m not sure why I’m doing what I’m doing, to think that perhaps somewhere along the way I lost track of what I wanted from life, to think that maybe I missed my stop. Beneath all those flittering emotions, though, there’s a vast ocean of certainty that I am going to be ok. No. Even more. That I am continually and always will be ok.
And, maybe, this is what it means to grow up—to lose the people you love, to lose pieces of yourself, to learn how much more expansive you can be. When I was in California looking through photos for my grandfather’s slideshow at the funeral, I was struck by the diversity of shots. There were so many I’d never seen. I saw a photo of him with his parents, and found the program from his mother’s funeral, which he kept in his sock drawer so that he might see it everyday. I saw photos of him with three different wives at different stages of his life, and I saw so, so many photos of him happy. If nothing else, these photos were a testament to the great expansive sphere of his life. I was lucky to occupy a portion of it, but to know that he had so much more comes as a great comfort. So, as I grow up, I am looking to his example: To mourn those I love. To love and love again. And, to let myself touch and be touched by so many people that my grandchildren will look around at my funeral in awe of the memories each heart holds.
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