When I Grow Up . . .
When I grow up, I want better hair, hair that falls into place without much work, hair that looks professional yet fun. When I grow up, I want a professional wardrobe that doesn't require hose. I want to look smart but be comfortable.
When I grow up, I want a maid, someone who scrubs toilets and windows, vacuums my house, changes the sheets, and dusts everything.
When I grow up, I want to live downtown. I want an old building downtown with enough money to pay someone else to renovate it so that Wes has a studio downstairs and we have living quarters upstairs. And definitely, I need a hot tub on the roof. I deserve a hot tub.
When I grow up . . . I can't imagine growing up. Or rather, I can't imagine feeling grown up. I know that I'm an adult. I've voted in every presidential election since I' was eighteen. I've paid my own bills for ages, graduated from college (three times), worked since I was fifteen, made mistakes, and accepted responsibility for those mistakes. But grown up? That always seems right over the horizon, and now it doesn't seem as glittering as before.
Before I turned eighteen or twenty-one, I imagined those years as conveying some kind of authority and status, but I obtained alcohol easily before then. I got into nightclubs without problems starting when I was fifteen. My parents generally let me make my own decisions within reason. They weren't helicopter parents, hovering over every decision. They were available if I needed them, but mostly didn't harass me. I generally made good grades and stayed under the radar, which gave me tons of freedom my more outrageous friends didn't have. Stupid friends!
I associate growing up with a kind of death--or rather being grown as a kind of death--the end of a process. Since I'm always learning more about myself, about writing, about teaching, about education, I don't feel like a grown up. I feel like a learner, a student, an experienced novice. I'm not knocking my education and experience, just avoiding the stasis (is that the right word?) I associate with being a grown up. I can't imagine not continuing to grown and learn. I can't imagine deciding that I now know enough, that I'm done with growing up. That seems synonymous with ignorance to me.
When I grow up, I want a maid, someone who scrubs toilets and windows, vacuums my house, changes the sheets, and dusts everything.
When I grow up, I want to live downtown. I want an old building downtown with enough money to pay someone else to renovate it so that Wes has a studio downstairs and we have living quarters upstairs. And definitely, I need a hot tub on the roof. I deserve a hot tub.
When I grow up . . . I can't imagine growing up. Or rather, I can't imagine feeling grown up. I know that I'm an adult. I've voted in every presidential election since I' was eighteen. I've paid my own bills for ages, graduated from college (three times), worked since I was fifteen, made mistakes, and accepted responsibility for those mistakes. But grown up? That always seems right over the horizon, and now it doesn't seem as glittering as before.
Before I turned eighteen or twenty-one, I imagined those years as conveying some kind of authority and status, but I obtained alcohol easily before then. I got into nightclubs without problems starting when I was fifteen. My parents generally let me make my own decisions within reason. They weren't helicopter parents, hovering over every decision. They were available if I needed them, but mostly didn't harass me. I generally made good grades and stayed under the radar, which gave me tons of freedom my more outrageous friends didn't have. Stupid friends!
I associate growing up with a kind of death--or rather being grown as a kind of death--the end of a process. Since I'm always learning more about myself, about writing, about teaching, about education, I don't feel like a grown up. I feel like a learner, a student, an experienced novice. I'm not knocking my education and experience, just avoiding the stasis (is that the right word?) I associate with being a grown up. I can't imagine not continuing to grown and learn. I can't imagine deciding that I now know enough, that I'm done with growing up. That seems synonymous with ignorance to me.
posted by Donna Sewell at
8:31 AM
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