I'm an Adult?
Sometimes I'm amazed that I'm what is commonly seen as an adult. Late twenties, job-having, car-owning, home-owning adult.

I don't feel like an adult. I don't see myself as an adult. I don't even think I look like an adult. My friends don't look like adults to me. I'm still waiting around to grow up. Not in the sense that all I want to do is play with toys and eat ice cream. But the picture of my life through my eyes still looks like I'm hanging out, waiting to become the adult that I may already be.

I feel like a big kid playing around in my dad's suit at work (although as his daughter I typically don't wear his suits, or any man's suit). I feel like I go to this place all day where I have a job, just like my dad did when I was a kid. I come home at the end of a long day, just like he did. But it still doesn't click that that's me, having a job, like a grown-up.

I feel like a kid playing with my mom's pots and pans at home in the kitchen when I make dinner. I use the dishes, banging around, making lots of noise. Food is the finished product. Usually. But it still doesn't quite feel like I have a kitchen, filled with my own dishes, where I can make meals and have friends over for dinner parties, and freeze stuff for later, and recommend recipes to other people. Like adults do.

When I mow my lawn I feel like people drive by and see the teenage daughter doing her yardwork chores. I get out with the weed whacker and the mower and I make my yard look great, with straight edges and nicely kept grass. I pull the weeds and take care of the bushes and trees, just like my dad used to do. But it still feels like my dad will walk out of the garage and yell at me to go pick up the dog poop in the backyard, after I get finished mowing the front. Just like we used to do every Saturday when I hated yardwork as a kid.

I've grown to cringe at the thought of responsibility, yet I seem to find myself with a lot of it. I take care of my whole house all by myself. I have a car payment and car maintenance to attend to. I go to work everyday and I have responsibilties there. I have church responsibilities and meetings and important things and relationships to take care of. I am accountable to many people, many places, many things.

I still run to my parents for all sorts of issues and occassions. I'm on my own now, even though when I visit them we still fight over the bathroom, or about putting up the dishes, or about leaving my shoes out in the living room. Just like we used to do when I lived at home. But instead of crying over a cut, needing a Band-aid, or needing help with homework or prom dresses, I seek their advice now on income taxes, house contracts, hot water heaters, home maintenance, and planning for my future. I still look to my parents for guidance and to make me feel safe, just like I used to. Only now it's a long distance phone call, and all they can do is point me in the right direction. The rest is up to me.

When did I grow up? When did I become a neighbor, a tax-payer, a morning commuter, a concerned citizen? I can drive by my old houses, where we once lived as a family, and it seems as though nothing has changed. I'm still a teenager coming home after a night out with my friends, trying to make it back before my curfew.

But then I realize I have to keep driving past the house, and head back to the home I have now, because it's time for me to water the lawn before I go to bed early to be ready for work in the morning.

I am a responsible member of society, but I still feel like a kid playing house, expecting the real world to catch up with me any second.

Even though it already has.

C.T.