There’s adulting, and then there’s being grown-up. I learned the difference between the two early one morning…
I live in an inter-generational, homestead-y kind of a place.
Four people over the age of 21, two cats, one dog, a house with two different separate rentable spaces, a messy garden. Three different cars (one elderly, one middle-aged, one newish).
It means sharing a washing machine and a dishwasher with my son and girlfriend who live in the studio flat, one of the rentable spaces (and pay rent). We have separate kitchens, and do a fair amount of negotiating about who uses which car when. We often invite the young in the studio flat to the “main house” for Sunday supper, and they’ll cook for us in turn, often in the main house kitchen.
All this sharing and negotiating is a good thing all round: the older adults get to be prodded to be flexible, the younger adults get (I hope) to practice their adulting skills in a safe place, one where there’s a safety net.
What is adulting?
I’m old enough to remember when the word adult was a simple noun, referring to a person who was grown-up, no longer a child. It appears that it turned into a noun some time after 2010. Time magazine reports that in 2015 “the American Dialect Society – the organization that basically invented choosing a ‘word of the year’ – nominated the verb adult as (the) year’s most creative construction”. The verb to adult then turned back into a noun: adulting, similar in usage to parenting.
Adulting can be used in different ways, Time says, but essentially it indicates a time of transition: “… this jokey way of describing one’s engagement in adult behaviors – whether that is doing your own taxes, buying your first lawn mower, staying in on a Friday, being someone’s boss or getting super pumped about home appliances – can help… millennials acknowledge and/or make fun of and/or come to grips with that transition (or how late they are to it).”
What does being grown-up mean, then?
As I watch my son and his girlfriend make grocery lists and do the shopping and get to grips with their jobs and training courses, I think about what it means to move through that transition, and be a fully-fledged grown-up.
Which is why Item 5 in a list of 33 questions for generative social space by Sunni (Sun) Brown stood out for me.
The question: When did you realise you were a grown-up?
The questions are primarily intended to be used in a workshop setting, as ways to soften the barriers between people so that they “remember the fullness of another’s humanity”. I’ve stashed them for exactly that purpose – but I also use them as occasional writing prompts. As I am doing here.
When did I know I was grown-up?
I knew I was grown-up when I was 40 years old, and had a very small baby. It was 3am. I was awake, breast-feeding and exhausted. I thought: “Well, tomorrow I will take a nap and it’ll be okay.”
And then realised that I would not be taking a nap at all. Or, if I did get a nap, it would be because I had asked someone else to give me the grace of an hour to myself. I knew, all at once, that I would be carrying the weight of this responsibility, always. I would always be on call.
Until that point in my life, I had got through things by promising myself that there’d be a fix, a way things would be better or different, just a little bit down the road.
But that early morning, I knew different. This, right here, was how it was going to be. And I was strong enough to cope, to deal with things. In fact, there was nowhere else I wanted to be, no matter how hard it was. Like Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, I chose to accept my mission.
It’s all work
Adulting is important, in the sense that there comes a time when we have to do our own laundry. We all need, at some point, to square our shoulders and get on with the ordinary work of life. It’s also a developmental phase, something we learn to do as we move from being children to adults.
Being grown-up is different, and has nothing to do with how old you are. It’s being responsible, knowing what you have to do, and doing it, no excuses. There are children who take on responsibility too early, and there are adults who never get there, even though they might be supremely good at washing the dishes.
For myself, that early morning “putting on of the big girl panties” was a defining moment, a fork in the road. And I’m glad I took the path that I did.
Main picture: Catt Liu, Unsplash
Other things I have written
Musings on the meaning of work – When did the work done in the home become less important than work done elsewhere? And why are the people who do that work so under-valued?
How to (not) be a middle-class homesteader – Homesteading means living a self-sufficient lifestyle, with little help from others. Can you be a homesteader in a Cape Town suburb? Sort of…
Leaving home ain’t what it used to be – My son is leaving home – sort of. But for young people in 2024, this is not the simple process it used to be. Kindness and understanding are key…
Growing a jungle garden: Lessons from chaos – I live in a suburban house in Cape Town – and have small, inexpertly cultivated vegetable patches. How can this be jungle gardening?
How can I help you make order from chaos?
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