What Makes a Grown Up?

This photo has very little to do with the post except that dressing up to take photos in a field isn't very adult. Or is it?

My brain has been swirling the last week or so trying to figure out why I don't feel like a grown up and what, in the future, could possibly cause me to finally believe in my own adultness. I'm tempted to start a poll of all the adults I know to find out what made them feel like an adult.

At 26, I'm old enough to vote, drink, smoke, and rent a car. I'm nearly two years married with a joint bank account. I'm four years into a career in which I'm expected to make business decisions and lead a staff of 10-30 people (who all listen to me, for some reason). I've signed a lease, bought a car, filed taxes, and registered for my own health insurance. I've voted in elections and traveled to several continents. I've moved away from home, made new friends (and kept the old), and learned to write thank you notes. I have had ice cream for dinner and leftover pie for breakfast. All good adult things.

I admit that nearly every day I make adult decisions and conduct myself in the manner of an adult but half the time I'm thinking to myself "is this at all convincing? how are people believing me? did she really just call me ma'am?" If I had to give you the age I feel it's much closer to 19 than to 26.

When do the adult-y feelings kick in? Is it after having kids? Is it after buying your first home? Does it kick in after five years of working full time? 10? Do you feel like an adult once all your towels match and you've picked out wallpaper? Is it different for every person? Does everyone just pretend to be an adult until one day they wake up and believe it about themselves?

At this point I'm betting that last one. As it goes, fake it until you make it!

At Home, Here

Y'all, I swear I just swept the porch.

I spend many mornings on the front porch with a cup of coffee and a book. Sometimes I sit engrossed in the story but many morning the book sits, open and ignored, on my lap. Instead I am engrossed in my new home. I hear the birds calling to each other ('pretty bird, pretty bird' and "ratchhharatchhha'). I watch my neighbors drive by and the squirrels scamper through my yard and into someone else's. If I sit out in the evening with a glass of wine I am witness to kids playing games that I'm sure if I got close enough would remind me of the ones I played 15 or so years ago.

We're happy here in the yellow rental house under the pines. We're happy in our jobs, him at the lab and me in yet another store. I've spent the past few days trying to figure out why we're happy (because, of course, it is not enough to be happy without analyzing--what is wrong with me?). We're in a new state so far from everyone we know and love. So far from our comforts and the familiar and yet we're happy. Yesterday afternoon, walking through the USC campus, dripping in sweat in the 100 degree heat, I figured it out. We're happy because we're moving forward.

Life in Arlington for the past few years was about treading water: finish school, keep my job, don't commit further than two years because then we're outta here, baby. We were making moves to get to where we wanted to be but most of those moves were stationary. Now here we are in a brand new city actually in the future we talked about for so long! We are out of school and employed in our field of choice. We're making decisions for now and next year and the year after that. For so long we were warming up at the starting line and this move down here was like the gun firing and oh boy, we're off!

Now watch us fly. 

focused on the now

Life right now is in a holding pattern. We are waiting for news but for now there is no more we can do to prepare. Every day feels like a breath inhaled and every night we go to sleep without exhaling--waiting for a phone call that will change our lives. It is hard for me to live without control or plans going farther than the week ahead. I set dates months in advance and plan adventures for half a year away but right now our yearly calendar is blank. Every month is just a giant question mark asking "where will we be?"

To weather the unknown I have been spending a lot of my time focusing on our current home. Hanging picture frames on the walls keeps me happy and feeling a little more in control. The anticipation of moving away from my first home as a grown up, my first home as a wife, our first home as a family is emotionally challenging but also highly motivating! I have framed more photos and nailed more nails in the last two months than the four years prior. I am in a rush to "finish" this home because I can actually feel time running out. If I don't hang the family gallery wall in the hallway now it will never happen! So I did, last night, and it is just as I imagined. 

It feels important to me to make this the home I always wanted it to be before I leave. I am not really sure why. Although, in discussions with my best friend she reminds me that I need it to look like I always dreamed so I can photograph it in all its glory and have those photographs to look back on forever. Which makes perfect sense (it is so good to have friends who know you so well). In the meantime, the framing and the decorating gives me a project to focus on now so I don't spend all my time focused on a future that is out of my control.

spring equinox

Every year we get together to celebrate the first day of Spring. It is a wonderful tradition that I am hoping to continue for a long, long time. It is lovely to have a friend to celebrate the changing of the seasons with. It is lovely to say good-bye to Winter and hello to Spring (even if it snowed today). For our fourth annual equinox celebration and we went to the Natural History Museum and spent the morning exploring human origins. Lunch was shared sandwiches in the Sculpture Garden pavilion followed by a stroll through the Art Gallery. It may have been sleeting and snowing outside but inside it was toasty warm and filled with beauty to look at. Look back: year one, year two, year three.

homebody

It took me years to accept that I was a homebody. I thought that I needed to be a go-go-see-visit person to be fulfilled. That may be the truth for some but the truth for me is that home is what fills me up when I'm empty, home is what soothes me when I'm stressed, home is where I feel the most happy. I am a traveler and a lover of visiting my friends and family but at the end of all the trips, long or short, I am always so very pleased to come home.

Home to me is a cozy couch where I used to practice my violin that I now sit on to knit. Home to me is a basket full of borrowed library books in the living room and bookshelves full of owned books in the office. Home to me is yellow walls in the kitchen and yellow walls in the dinning room. Home to me is light (oh the light here, I'll miss it so when we leave) streaming through the windows. Home to me is wood floors gifted to me by my husband, no gift can be sweeter--or dustier. Home to me is filled with the things I treasure: coffee mugs, antlers, antiques, and brass birds. Home to me, of course, is not just the walls around and the stuff within it's the feeling of peace and security and the husband who makes here home with me.

At the end of a work day or a weekend away 

there is no greater feeling than opening the front door, 

setting down my bags, and sinking into home, sweet home.