This May, I’m committing myself to writing student-assigned topics. Some of them might be cut-and-dried, some of them might be bears. And some of them will reveal themselves in the writing.
Today’s assignment: What does it mean to grow up?
What does it mean to grow up? Of course, I could joke around about the answer to this question and simply remark, “I never have!”
But I have grown up. Despite wanting to stay child-like in my awe and idealism, I have officially become a grown-up. And I have a few things to say about being a grown-up: we can pinpoint moments of transition, there are things we lose in being a grown-up, and there are things we gain.
First, I can pinpoint moments when I had to transition into grown-up-ness. All of them, unfortunately, circle around times of grief and loss. There was the time I had to go with my mom to tell my grandmother that my grandpa had just passed away. That’s a moment kids are shielded from, ordinarily. Being a part of that moment was the first time I realized I was no longer a kid. I’ve also experienced the loss of my brother, my father, my niece, a friend. All of these losses gave me a different understanding and wisdom about this world that I can only describe as a growing-up.
Growing up also means that there are things from childhood that I lose. Being a kid means getting to jump full-on into play and creativity. As much as I love to create and play, there is now a certain part of me that doesn’t let it happen with reckless abandon. I have one foot planted in joy and fun, and one foot planted in the idea that I’m going to have to stop at some point because I’ve got stuff to do. I also miss the deep feelings and thoughts I had as a kid. Being a kid is really hard sometimes. As a kid, you take a lot of hurt and pain and you have to figure out what to do with it, and there isn’t always someone to tell you how. And I remember how hard that was, and I remember the memories of those feelings, but it isn’t the same as experiencing them in real time. I can empathize, but I no longer feel and experience things in the same way. I can’t completely identify or understand any more, even though I would love to.
Growing up doesn’t mean that you’re all of a sudden better at organizing things, at making friends, or paying attention, or managing difficult feelings, or cleaning your room, or eating better, or doing homework, or staying out of trouble, or that you like doing chores. But it does mean that you’re coming to things with a deeper perspective, a bit more patience, and a LOT more experience (often gotten the hard way). Growing up means giving up some things, but it’s possible to hold on to a strong moral compass, a love of creativity, a sense of awe and wonder. Growing up means forgetting some of the feelings of childhood, but having more wisdom, more compassion, more patience. I don’t think, at this point in my life, that I’d trade any of it back.
Soapbox: The Way I see Things 
Lainie, that’s an interesting question, and “Bravo!” for how you answered it. Growing up is a gradual process, but you’re certainly right: There are distinct moments of transition. Many of them come and go without a lot of fanfare (but they’re easy to see while looking back), but others are distinct and memorable. Thanks for sharing this!
Thank you! I’ll be sharing it with my loveys tomorrow. =))
I also give that knee-jerk reaction of “Who said I’m a grown-up?”
So much of this I could parse out in reflection. Becoming a parent was definitely the first step toward my grown-up-ness. A child forces one to prioritize and quickly.
But this is the line that struck with me: “As a kid, you take a lot of hurt and pain and you have to figure out what to do with it, and there isn’t always someone to tell you how.” This is a very unfortunate thing of adulthood. Many grownups tend to trivialize or outright dismiss the feelings of children because we have “grownup things to tend to”. Because “Growing up means forgetting some of the feelings of childhood”, usually the bad feelings, this is the result when encountering such in children.
This was a wonderfully insightful essay. Definite an appetizer for thought,