A few weeks back my mother and I had an interesting conversation on the subject of growing up. As your life moves forward, especially if you bear sole responsibility for any changes that occur in it, I find you begin to have this split vision of who you are as a person. With my parents and around them, I still feel like a child. I am loved and taken care of. Every trip back home is enveloped in so much warmth that after about a week I become this very fuzzy white little bunny making purring noises. My mother still wakes me in the mornings by whispering all my kiddie nicknames in my ear, hugging me, brushing my hair with her hand. The dog is constantly trying to steal a kiss or two, my dad makes breakfast. It’s paradise, really, – as good as it gets this side of the Sun. I do nothing, literally. I just take all the fuzziness in. I behave silly and we laugh, a lot. I’m not a grown-up there, I’m just somebody’s daughter, just somebody’s little girl.

And then there is the other me – the one that lives here, alone, and she is anything but fuzzy. She doesn’t really have the time to get all mushy, there is rent to be paid, plus hungry tummy does nobody no good. So she keeps herself busy making a living in this land she still doesn’t get. For the most part she is strong, and I’m pretty sure people have known her to be cruel – well, she thinks she is just sparing them the bullshit, but, you know, not all of us are into tough love. So be it. She has earned respect and is trusted to make decisions. She is obsessively self-sufficient, won’t take nothing from nobody unless she earned it. That annoys me once in a while, and I wish she could just let go and choose the easy way here and there. But then I remember that we are one and the same and such is our nature, so we both relax. Now, this second one, she is most definitely a grown-up, right?.. No idea.

These two versions of me overlap on occasion and turn me all confuzzled. So I asked my mom: “When did you know, I mean really know that you were all grown up, that you were an adult? When did you feel that you have made that transition?” Oddly enough,  she knows not of such thing. There I was, thinking that my parents had it all figured out by the time I came into their lives! Mom laughed at my suggestion of them two being that well thought-through. She was 23 and my father was 22, and if there is one thing they both know – they were just plain silly. Well, think about it, they bring me home from the hospital and decide they won’t sleep at night because they are afraid I may want something and they won’t hear me ‘ask’. Quick show of hands – who thinks you can miss an infant screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night? Right. They learned. The first night.

So I guess there is really no train to take you to the “Grown Up” station – you don’t  cross over to a place where you are just one thing. You just keep moving, trying on different roles in life, like new outfits. Some are an average fit, some make you look fat, and in others you just look smoking hot. The latter ones are probably those you should stick with. I know I’m definitely keeping this one in my closet:

the good life

Every chance I get, I’ll keep going back to be that girl. To feel little, to feel precious, to tell the woman who gave me life that she rocks my world and feel her arms around me again.

Not everyone is lucky to grow up like that. If you were, you make sure to let them know how grateful you are.

The most genuine, beautiful things in life are really just that simple.