Grow Up Already!

I got married and moved out on my own when I was 18 years old. I spent four years in college and graduated when I was 22. I got divorced shortly after that, then I met a new guy and had a baby. Got married again. Got divorced again. Worked my ass off at a job I hated for four years to support myself and my daughter. Fell in love and moved halfway across the world to live in Sweden. Got married a third time (it's the charm, right?). Turned 30. Bought a house. Had a couple more kids. So, you see, I've done a lot of "grown-up" things in my life.

When I was a kid, I imagined there would be some magical age at which I would suddenly be an adult. When I was 16, maybe, and had a driver's license. Or when I was 18 and could vote and be legally responsible for myself. When that didn't happen, I started thinking that once I was done with school and had a "real" job I would feel like a grown-up. Nope. When I became a mother and was totally responsible for a tiny, helpless person? Never less than then. I started to wonder if it would ever happen, if I would ever feel like an adult.

A lot of years have passed since then. I'm 32 years old now and the mother of three, but I feel only slightly more grown-up now than I did when my eldest was born almost ten years ago. I can remember when my own mother was the same age I am now, and it scarcely seems possible that I should be as grown-up as she was then. I still feel like her kid! Surely by now I should have come full-on into adulthood. I'm starting to despair of it ever happening.

Looking back, I guess I should have realized that it would be like this. I spent my entire high school career in awe of the seniors, of how cool and sophisticated and--dare I say it?--grown-up they were. I couldn't wait to be that cool myself. Of course, when the day came I was still the same old me and having reached the twelfth grade hadn't turned me into a sophisticated adult. Part of me thought it was just me, that I was just uncool and awkward where all those older kids had been so cultured. It wasn't until my baby brother was graduating from high school and sent me his senior photo that I started to see things a little differently. On the back he wrote, "I don't even feel as old as I thought you were when you were a senior." Aha! At least I knew then that I wasn't just terminally uncool (in the eyes of my little brother, at any rate).

Even knowing that the perception of adult-ness is in the eye of the beholder hasn't helped me feel any more grown-up myself. I still feel like a fraud at parents' meetings at my daughter's school. When I talk to her friends' parents I sometimes feel like I'm acting out a role in a play, all dressed up in some "real" grown-up's clothes and saying things "real" grown-ups would say. I feel like I might be exposed at any moment. I'm sure I'm not convincing anyone.

I did have an interesting experience a few weeks ago. I had to drop off some paperwork regarding my daughter's after-school care, and to get to the person I needed to see I had to walk through a bunch of preschool-aged kids at the daycare. As I passed a small group of them, I heard one little boy whisper to another, "Is that your mom?" At first I was a little taken aback. I mean, please ... do I look like someone's mom?! Then I realized ... wait! I look like someone's mom! All right!

At least someone's convinced.