Being the grown-up

Real Simple Magazine is sponsoring an essay contest that asks you to answer the question, “When did you realize that you had become a grown-up?” I’m not motivated enough to produce a polished essay on the topic, but I’ve been thinking about that question for months now. It wasn’t when I first became a parent, which is one of the expected, cliché answers. I didn’t even feel like a parent in the beginning. I simply felt a fierce, evolutionary responsibility for the new pets in my care, and there were only a few surreal moments in the first weeks when I would realize that these pets were, in fact, two little girls – my daughters - and I was the mother. So no, it wasn’t an instantaneous, now-I’m-the-grownup feeling. As I gradually grew to know and love my babies, so did I gradually become the grown up.

When I first saw the question for the Real Simple contest back in June, I thought with a start, “Now. Now that you ask me, I realize that I do actually feel like a grown-up.” It is kind of a weird feeling, and still pretty new, having lived my first 37 years not feeling at all grown-up inside. Oh sure, I was ultra-responsible, professionally successful, married, owned a house, etc., but none of those external indicators really matured the child inside. I can’t even say exactly what it is about the kids that turned me into a grown-up. Truly putting their well-being ahead of my own? Realizing that my words, actions, and behavior would be their primary model of womanhood? Being able to step back into the mother/daughter cycle of life after being on the outside looking in for so long?

These are big questions, and perhaps if I would take the time to eloquently describe the earthquake-like shifts that have taken place in my psyche, I’d have an essay to submit to Real Simple. But I can only offer the following external behaviors as proof that I have, in fact, grown up.

Exhibit A: Cat Vomit. I adopted my cat, Kosmo, in 1999, while I was renting a house with my friend R.H. One day he vomited on the carpet in my bedroom. I did what any reasonable person would do: I covered it up with a paper bag and went about my business. My boyfriend (Twin Daddy) learned then that if the relationship was going to continue, he would have to accept that I would never, ever, ever clean up cat vomit, kill a giant cockroach (even if it was crawling across the kitchen counter), or in any way deal with the bodily functions or remains of any being that crossed my path. I would simply put up some markers to indicate the area of the mess and wait for him to clean it up. And I could wait forever.

Then one day, my daughters began to crawl. And the cat vomited on the floor. I hurried to clean it up, without a second thought. Giant roaches have been crawling into my house to die of thirst since April. I pick them up and throw them out, without so much as a gross-out face. I even discarded of the dead baby tarantula I found in the garage before Monkey could pick it up.

Exhibit B: Cooking. One of the things that attracted me to Twin Daddy as a long term partner was his gourmet cooking skills. It was a guarantee that I would never be expected to cook a holiday meal or bake a birthday cake. It’s not just that I couldn’t cook well. I really didn’t like anything about cooking and found it to be an undertaking utterly without merit. I didn’t care what food tasted like, as long as I was no longer hungry when I finished eating it. And since it could be purchased ready to eat, I didn't see what all the fuss over cooking was about.

So then I had these two kids, and I was overcome with desire to stay home with them, make their pureed baby food from scratch, and have a warm dinner waiting for my husband when he came home. I addressed the little matter of not knowing how to cook by just doing it, a lot. I also got a really good cookbook, some cute aprons, and other accoutrements to make me feel like I was playing 50s housewife. I still don’t like to cook. But I’ve discovered the merit: a sense of pride in providing my family a healthy, home cooked meal.


How do I know I’ve grown up? I take pride in performing all parts of my job, even the parts I don’t like. I cheerfully do things I scorned in the past, because those things benefit my family. I embrace the responsibility of knowing that my children look up to me, the grown-up.