Grownups

My sister’s best friend stopped by this weekend. Long story leading up to it, sister’s boyfriend went to Hawaii, crazy swimming, running, biking Ironman contender, sister went to stand by her man and left me with long-haired, furry chow who tracked leaves into my house all week. Anyway, sister’s best friend stopped by on Saturday to pick up leaf-dragging dog and take her to Denver where sister will pick her up on Wednesday. Before she left, sister’s best friend looked around my house, and as she walked into my dining room, she proclaimed, “Wow, you’re like a real adult here.” Huh?

This thought has puzzled me all weekend. I want to point out for the record, even though my sister tries to convince people otherwise, that I am the younger sister by two and a half years, and while sister’s best friend is younger than I am, it is only by a year or so. So what was it in my house that she saw that identified me as an adult? Was it the pictures of my daughter framed throughout the dining room? Or the fact that I had a dining room? Was it that I have a dining room table with matching chairs? Maybe it’s because I finally put curtains up this year. I’m stumped. It can’t be because I own a house because my sister became a homeowner last year, and if sister’s best friend didn’t live in Denver, where you have to be rich or sleeping with someone rich to own a house, I’m sure she would’ve bought one by now. It can’t be my career, because both my sister and sister’s best friend have careers, and sister’s best friend even flies all over the United States for hers. It has to be the marriage, the child and now the divorce that sets me apart, but I’m not sure why this combination makes me any more adult than anyone else.

I have a friend from college who never married. She lives in New Mexico, still rents a house, and constantly assures me that she plans on growing up sometime soon. But what does that mean? Why are there certain flags we have to grab on our way through life before we are considered adults? Yes, I have a mortgage; yes, I am forever responsible for a child; yes, I will have my booty down south tomorrow at 7 a.m. or suffer the loss of a job, and yes, I will soon sit down and begin weeding through shared financial responsibility with the man who once promised to love me forever. But does that make me more of an adult than my friend in New Mexico who went to Mardi Gras last year and kissed a woman for a string of beads? Like any other stage of life, there must be a million ways to claim your place in adulthood.

I am currently claiming residency as a stable adult. If you need someone to watch your dog, I’m your girl. But just as my friend in New Mexico dreams of someday planting her own roots of stability in her life, I work at adding moments of wild abandon to mine. Music that is a little too loud. Earrings that are a tad too dangly. Bumper stickers that offend the wrong sort of people. I think we’re all trying to avoid becoming Archie and Edith Bunker, while also ensuring that we don't make it to our senior citizen years with nothing to talk about. The rest of adulthood, we just have to figure out for ourselves.