GROWING UP

I absolutely love having dinner with friends. It's just one more sign of getting older I suppose, but I prefer having a good dinner with a bottle of wine to drinking at a bar anyday of the week.

My freshly 18 year old sister and her 21 year old boyfriend visited us for about a week recently. I do not think I have ever felt as old as when hanging out with them. I guess I haven't realized that I have been turning into an adult every day. I still wear jeans to work! I still watch The Simpsons! I don't even clean my apartment every week! Not that any of these habits need to change in order for me to become adult (though I'm trying to get better about the cleaning...). Which is my point I guess.

I have, without noticing, turned into an adult who likes to cook and wants a garden and just might want to raise a family and certainly prefers lectures about nutrition to partying.

I have replaced pb & j on white bread (crusts cut off please) with turkey, avocado and sprouts on whole wheat bread, hold the mayo please.

I have replaced white russians with white wine.

I have replaced messing around with friends on the subway with reading a book on the subway.

I have replaced laying out in Central Park with a daily application of sunscreen.

I have replaced bedtime at 2am with bedtime at 10:30pm.

But I am still me.

I'm still the same person who, at 18, was never going to have children, would never stop staying up until midnight, who would always listen to NWA, who would never forget what it was like to be a kid.

I was bold and confident in myself at 14, 16, 18, even 21. I am still bold and confident in myself, though from a very different perspective.

As a teenager I screamed at my mom in a fit of angst that adults just don't understand what it is like to be young. I told her that I thought a piece of their brain dries up and disappears - the piece that remembers what it feels like to be a kid. I told her I would never lose that part of my brain. She said, "Okay; we'll see."

Hmmm.

I guess mother's are indeed always right.