Category — Uncategorized

There’s a thought that bubbles up sometimes when I think about the twins in college: We can go wherever we want that we can afford while the twins are away. For seventeen years, we’ve been tied to their schedule — especially the school schedule — and we’re released from that for the most part.

We can go to New England for a week and work out of a hotel — just because. We don’t need a reason to go to places that make us happy.

But… instead of making me happy or excited, this thought makes me feel untethered. I’ve liked being linked to their schedule for seventeen years. I’ve liked having fall mean something. I’ve liked trying to figure out weekend plans. It has given my world structure.

Parts of my year will still move around their life. I will want to be home any time they are home, and I will want to visit them wherever they are. But there are all the Betweens; all of the weeks where we can do Anything. Yes, those words needs capital letters because they feel like they are looming over me, casting a shadow with their enormity.

At some point, I became an adult. But I have zero clue of when this happened. I did not feel like an adult in my first job after grad school. I clearly was an adult in the eyes of my students, but I didn’t feel like an adult. But during the first year of my marriage, I felt like an adult. So I assume the transformation happened some time between Year A and Year B.

It’s such an odd question because it happens separate from any collective trigger, individualized to every person. For instance, someone may feel like an adult at 18, while another feels like an adult at 30. And unlike other life events (graduation, marriage, etc), nothing triggers the moment. You either feel it or you don’t, and that feeling could be tied to any number of reasons from big, life changing events to the fact that you successfully navigated a raise at work. It’s different for each person.

The Atlantic tried to pinpoint “what is it that makes people grown up?” It’s a fascinating article that will make you trace the paths in your own life, trying to decide the first time you thought to yourself, “Oh, I’m the grownup.”

So? When did it happen? When did you become an adult?

When the kids were little, I had a hard time reading Where the Wild Things Are aloud because my throat would catch. I’ve written about this before — how much I identify with Tzippy. She is the wild thing who cries out to Max, “Oh please don’t go – we’ll eat you up – we love you so!” when he leaves the wild rumpus.

The wild things, after all, are terribly misunderstood. They don’t gnash their teeth and roll their eyes out of hate. They do this out of love. Out of a love that comes from an enormous well of pain because life–as well as our love–is so deeply out of our control. If the wild things actually had the power to stop Max, they would have. But like too many of us know, we can shake our fist at the world all we want, and it can’t bring back what is missing; what has never come.

I’ve been thinking about the book a lot because the twins are looking at colleges, trying each one on inside their head and wondering if it would be a good place to live and learn for four years. They are lucky that they like a lot of schools and will make themselves happy in multiple places.

I have been trying to give them the space to try on the colleges in their heads even though my inner Tzippy is roaring. She does not want them to go. She wants to eat them up because she loves them so. She cannot imagine how she will get her feet to move out the door when she drops them off for college. How she will make it through those first days. Those first weeks. Those first months until they come home for a visit. I feel very lonely, out of step with other parents who talk about big plans for their upcoming empty nest.

When I wrote those posts in 2009 and 2012, I knew that we would one day be at this point. That I would feel this way when I reached this point. But it is very different living this point; feeling my inner Tzippy reaching out and roaring every single day.

Okay, so Carolyn Hax actually starts her advice with: “You don’t have to tell people to mind their own business … You don’t have to respond to people, period. You have so much power here, and always do. You get to choose what you say.”

The advice is for a person who doesn’t want to say why they’re not drinking, but it’s applicable to any nosy questioner. I am terrible at using silence, but it’s a skill worth perfecting because there is so much power in simply not answering what you don’t feel comfortable answering.

As Carolyn says, all you need to do is “either ignore the comments as if they never happened or, other end of the scale, make silent eye contact with an eyebrow-raise.”

Nothing profound, but I’ve been loving Zach King’s illusion videos.

Or this one:

Or this one:

Something fun for your weekend.