Anti-aging.

Christy P asked me in a comment to my post about this our first Christmas in our own home:  "Do you feel like a grownup yet?   I am starting to."

Funny.  Here I am, 35 years old and the mother of four, and you would think I would feel like a grownup by now.  Truth is, I am also just starting to.  I have felt like an impostor of a grown-up most of my technically-adult life, assuming that all my peers are really grownups and I am not.

Interesting that Christy's comment came up in the context of celebrating holidays at home, leading one's own family, and not some other context.  I assumed for years that the biggest reason I didn't feel like a grownup was because I didn't have a so-called "real job."  First I was in school, and then I was in school some more, and then I was in school SOME MORE, and then I became a mother (while I was still in school), and then I was a mother at home with small children, um, running their schooling.  I am, it seems, still in school.    The fact that I rather enjoy the situation has seemed almost to confirm my non-grownup status.  

For a long time I thought that another source of my feeling as if I were impersonating a grownup was a sense of a stunted appearance.  I think this is a vestige from childhood, as I was a very short child, slow to mature and socially backward, who perpetually looked (and sometimes behaved) at least two years younger than my peers, never quite able to catch up.  Until quite recently the face in the mirror always looked "too young" -- I don't mean that in a good way, like "youthfully attractive," but rather "childish."    Losing a third of my body weight last year did away with that -- as everything deflated and dropped and relaxed over that year, I saw something new in the mirror, lines that had been slowly forming over the past years, but masked and camouflaged by that infantilizing plumpness that has dominated.   I like looking my age, and feel I've put on a much more convincing disguise.

Family life hasn't done it either, and I shouldn't have been surprised by that either.  Look around:  there's plenty of evidence that adulthood is neither a prerequisite for, nor a result of, making babies.   Nor does getting married automatically signify a transition in responsibility.  Once it might have, but it's well obscured now.  I concede that I haven't had to endure much hardship, and that perhaps it's an easy, happy adulthood that has given me the impression of no adulthood at all.   Or perhaps it's that I was free and clear for such a relatively short period, so that I've had a sense of being cared for for most of my life; sometimes, when Mark's doing the taxes or putting snow tires on the van, or sometimes when I'm awake in bed doing crossword puzzles and glance over to see him fallen asleep with the light on, curled around a sleeping child who asked for Daddy at bedtime, I am startled to realize that I am married to a 36-year-old man.  I'm pretty sure I am technically of marriageable age, so this ought not to shock me, but nevertheless it still does.

Perhaps the feeling of masquerade is a quirk of my probably disordered personality.  Perhaps it is  just one long dress rehearsal for age-related dementia ("No, Mrs. A., I'm not your mass transport TA, I'm just here to change your bedpan.")  Or maybe it's more common than I think, this disguise, and I am no more or less special, no younger or older inside than anyone else.

Comments

[Christy P.]

Being in charge of forming memories and family traditions feels like a much bigger responsibility than merely keeping a child alive or shaping his little mind with education.

[bearing]

A profound point!

I think family traditions are pretty malleable at this stage, or maybe I'm just fooling myself. I did discover a couple of weeks ago that in just 2 weeks of lighting the advent wreath, the ritual had hardened into That With Which We Must Not Tamper, when we attempted to do one thing a little bit different (sing a different song on the request of one child) and ended up with two separate meltdowns.

[Celeste]

My SIL and I have had a couple funny dicussions on this one. We're both 28 and don't feel like grown-ups yet, despite being mothers (and in her case, a professional as well). We often swap stories of events that gave us a little peek at what being an adult must be like, like when ordering a dining set or buying a garden hose or hosting Thanksgiving dinner. Those seem like fairly adult things to do, but--nope, still don't feel like an adult.

My husband and I discuss this too--completing an international adoption entirely on our own? Nope. Giving birth to my third child? Not yet. Maybe our fourth baby due in April will finally put us over the edge. Like you, I went from school to more school to more school to having a baby, so I've never had a "real job" either. But my husband has a real job, of course, and we both find it hard to believe he'll be leaving his twenties this February. Maybe that will be the nudge we're looking for? We aren't childish and we're not scared of aging, so I'm not sure what it is holding us back from feeling like we belong.

My mom always said that measuring for drapes was the sign of adulthood. Maybe that'll be the charm? :)

[Erin]

I don't believe I've ever commented on your blog before, but I greatly enjoy it. I'm a chemist and find your experimental cooking reports to be fascinating. Funny enough, I'm 34, single, and childless with a fulfilling and challenging "real job" and I still don't feel like an adult. I've always figured it was because I'm not married with children.

[Cathie B]

Hey, I'm another "not quite feeling like an adult" here. But for me, life is good when you are 42 and you feel like you are a 17 year old...

[Jeanie]

I have not commented before either, but I read and enjoy your blog regularly. This post and the comments are fascinating to me. I am 49 but do not yet feel like an adult. I have always wondered if other people felt this way. I am married, with four children, two of whom are on their own, I have a "real job" and have been acting like a responsible adult for decades. I suspect that having both of my parents alive and in good health plays a large role in my viewing of myself as still a kid. I have a certain sense of their over-arching protection around me.

[BettyDuffy]

This same thought has been on my mind too. I feel like I couldn't wait to be nineteen, and then once I was, I don't think I ever progressed. What's funny is that all that time I thought grown-ups had it all figured out, they were probably just as confused I was. Helps me get over my imposter syndrome though. It's simply not true that everyone else is more mature and smarter than I am.

And this wrinkle thing...I too lost a bunch of weight and suddenly look old, especially in my cheeks and around my mouth. This is not what I expected to happen. I thought I looked older being heavy. Seems I can't stop the clock whether I'm fat or thin. I am definitely older than I feel.

[Rebekka]

Me, too. My husband is 35 and we've been married for 7 years, and sometimes I still look at him and think "wow, he's so old!" (I'm 31). Occasionally the thought flies into my head - in 5 years he'll be FORTY. Ok, need to stop thinking about that.

I don't have kids but am fairly close to several of our friends' children... As far as I can tell having children doesn't make you grow up, it just makes you tired. :-)

I work outside the home and that's where the masquerade really starts, because I'm an RN and have to be an authority figure for everything from self-righteous teens to criminals to people several times my age. (And occasionally inexperienced doctors!) If you can construct an argument based on a professional foundation you can get by with a lot... And that means that "because I'm the mom and I say so" must be a valid argument. Right?

[Tabitha]

I wonder if this is something that most of us modern "young adults" feel? I'm 37 and have 6 kids, husband is a professional. I don't feel like a grownup yet. I have a hard time thinking that Laura Ingalls Wilder or people from her generation felt this way.
Is it because our culture worships youth and we want to hold on?

[mandamum]

I feel this way too--but less than I used to in my 20s (I'm 32). The times I feel "grown up" are when I discover that the skills I have spent time developing...actually work! This includes talking to a younger sister who is a math major about a homework problem and realizing in a minute how it should be approached (I did a math PhD but never taught beyond Freshman Calc and really couldn't see myself ever able to carry a course like Real Analysis, but maybe I underestimate myself...). In homemaking, it's when I pull off keeping the house together and shopping for my week's menu without forgetting a major ingredient, or when another (older!) mother borrows an idea I found to work. And in parenting, it's when I actually feel I "disciplined" a child (in that she learned something that helps her toward the goal) instead of just treating symptoms....

I think I experienced a sort of "coming of age" when I was pregnant with my first baby and could attend a La Leche League meeting in my own right, because I grew up with fond memories of LLL from my mother's attendance. And again when I was homeschooling and could connect with the mothers in my mother's homeschooling group, many of whom have oldest children my youngest brother's age and are midway between my mother's age and mine. Both times, it was as if I was accepted into a society whose members I admired and aspired to be like.

I appreciate that most of the authority figures around me are still older than I am--I can't really warp my head around having doctors, dentists, lawyers, priests...that are younger than my youngest siblings.

[Kelly]

I suspect that no one ever feels old, and that's why older people are always complaining about their health. To us, it makes perfect sense that their eyes and joints and whatnot are giving out. That's part of being old. But to them, they still aren't old yet, and they can't quite understand why it is happening to them.

My husband had surgery for a hernia this year, and he felt pretty much the same way.

I still remember when he finished his residency after his doctorate and got his first "real" job at age 30. He went through the salary and benefit negotiations, then signed the contract. I said "Can you believe they're really going to pay you all that (relatively to a grad school stipend)? Don't you feel like you just pulled off some big trick on them?" He said he sure did!