Was there one age where I mentally became an adult? It seems like there should have been, but for me, it flip-flopped a few times. Sometimes I had a choice, other times I didn't and I had to be the adult, even when I didn’t feel like it.
Case in point: When my first husband was killed in Vietnam, I was an adult, but I needed to be my parents’ child again. I wanted desperately to feel safe and secure in what I felt was an unsafe insecure world. I needed the reassurance only their love could give that life could still be worth living and I would still be me, without him.
At the birth of my children, I was an adult. I would be making decisions that would affect me and my children. The responsibility came easily and, when I look back, it's THE one part of my life I'm most proud of.
I can’t say I always acted like an adult. There was nothing I loved more than letting my inner child play with my three daughters. I loved teaching them to climb trees, make mud pies and Playdough snakes, blanket forts, homemade kites, and how to ride a pillow pony down the stairs without getting hurt.
When I wrote my first children’s book, I was an adult, but I wrote from a child’s point of view. I drew from things my children and grandchildren said or asked about concerning the ways of grownups and their puzzling world.
When my parents both passed, I missed them terribly —I still do. With that loss, came the realization that a sacred baton had been passed. I was now the matriarch, the oldest and adult-est adult in my entire family.
If there was ever one age where adulthood finally stuck, I think it was then. I had finally come full circle. My grown daughters, my grandchildren, and my family could now come to me for reassurances and questions about life.
I am now 74 and this is an awesome place to be. Age really isn’t important any more. For the rest of my life, I can and will be whatever age I feel in the moment.
Today, the only age I really care about is … the next one.
Poet/Writer/Author of 5 books.
Quora Top Writer 2018.
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I was just telling someone yesterday that I grew up too fast. I was doing adult things and was making adult choices when I was 13 years old. I was umpiring little league games then and had my own team to coach at 16 and did that for 8 years. I was a McDonald’s manager at 17. I don’t know if that truly made me an adult then, but by the time I was in my 20s I was definitely there. I had a gob of experiences by then. I don’t know if I have a single event that put me there, but I think I definitely missed out on some time as a kid.
Adult is a word that states you can buy booze to drown your sorrows if you do choose.