Who's Watching Us?

Dear Mom,

At what age did you feel that you reached adulthood? Like really. Not the dictionary definition of adulthood, which actually says twenty years old is considered the beginning. There is no way I was an adult at twenty.

I’m 39 years old and I still, in so many ways, feel like a child. I still feel like I’m not even fully equipped to be in charge of my own children. How is it that I’m legally authorized to watch them? And how is it that I’m allowed to watch them without any of my own supervision?

When did this happen? At what point did the shift occur? When was the handoff?

There are many moments in my life when I stop and look around and wonder if I should be in control with no one watching over me. I half expect someone to barge in and take away my authority. To tell me it’s all been a trial, and I’ve failed. I can no longer be in charge because I am still a child myself. And I expect it because, in many ways, it’s true. An adult is a person who is fully developed, and I fear I’ll never feel like my development has reached its finality. I am constantly growing and changing, and I often wonder at what age I’ll finally feel finished. Will I ever be fully cooked?

What business do I have being responsible for others?

I can’t even keep a plant alive. Sorry, Mom. I know how hard this is to hear but I currently have three dead plants on display on my balcony for all the world to see. I can’t even find the time or energy or desire to dispose of them. I also currently have four loads of clean laundry on my bed to put away that I will likely put back into the laundry basket tonight and lie to myself by saying I’ll take care of it tomorrow. How I manage to get my kids to school and feed them daily is honestly beyond me.

Who decided to put me in charge?

No one granted me the permission to be a participant in society. No one notarized my promise to contribute to the world. No one stamped approval regarding my desire to have my own kids. These things just happened. Not overnight, but at times it feels that way. At times, it feels like one day I woke up at this new stage of life and it simply was. But then at the same time I wonder if I’m faking it. Am I pretending to be a functioning adult just to get by? Am I even fooling anyone?

Did you ever feel this way? Unprepared and unqualified? Did you ever stop and look around at your life and wonder if you had ever met the requirements for such a huge job?

So much of adulthood is me making shit up. I have zero idea what I’m doing most of the time and it does make me question whether or not I should be allowed to call myself an adult at all.

Part of me blames the sitcoms of the nineties. The shows that depicted families living in large homes with dads who had normal blue-collar jobs and moms who stayed home, and it all seemed so easy. So inevitable. It really made me feel like all I needed to do was marry a carpenter and we could have three kids and live in a giant home. This is not the adulthood I’m experiencing.

Perhaps it comes down to finances. I don’t have the house. I don’t have the guest bedroom or the two-car garage or the two cars. I don’t even have a bike rack on my one car. Could it be that I am waiting for status and success to feel like a true adult?

Or maybe it has nothing to do with money. Maybe adulthood feels foreign to me because I’m still figuring myself out. Maybe I feel like a child because I’m constantly learning about my childhood and how it still impacts me.

Maybe it’s because you’re not here. Maybe I’m lost trying to figure out how to be an adult because you aren’t here to guide me. You’re not here to be grandma to my kids. You’re not here to reassure me that I’ve arrived.

Am I still waiting for the handoff? Waiting for the elder to come tap my shoulder and tell me it’s my turn? That they will now sit out and relax while I take the wheel? Am I waiting for all the elders to die off? Will I never feel like the adult in the room while older generations loom over me with a plethora of advice and the occasional safety net? Maybe I’m still tethered to my own guardians and am unable to fully feel the permission to be secure in my adulthood without cutting those ties.

And what if it has more to do with you than I want to admit? What if you dying right before my wedding set me on a path to always feel like a child. Every major adult decision came after you were gone. You weren’t here to tell me to go on the honeymoon. You weren’t here to tell me to not move to Chicago. That you’d come out to visit and help with the pregnancy and the childbirth and the babies. You weren’t here to tell me at what temperature to best roast the potatoes and bake the salmon. Instead, I had to lean further into my ‘fake it till you make it’ mentality. I had to just figure shit out on my own.

To be honest, it’s probably more about me not wanting to be an adult. It’s me avoiding my own responsibility. It’s me wishing I didn’t have to work this hard to get by. It’s my exhaustion. My wish to rest. My desire to travel. All the things I haven’t been able to do since I was a child. Since you sent me on trips and to camps and encouraged life experiences. It’s my inability to be the adult to my kids that so many others are to theirs.

There. That feels like the answer. I can’t provide for my kids like others can. I can’t send them to camps and take them on trips without stressing about the spending. So, then it must be about money. Right? It must be that I decided at some point that being an adult was synonymous with financial success.

But then it feels more like I’m insecure about my status as a parent. Not as an adult. Because I don’t care about having a house for me. It’s always been for my kids. I’m constantly working to pull myself up to a level where my kids will be happiest. At the same time, I think they actually are happy. As is. Sure, they’ll eventually want separate bedrooms, but for now they love their setup. They love that we live in an apartment where we can always be close. Where we can always have eyes on them. Where they can feel like they’re being watched over. We are watching them.

No one is watching us.

Has anyone ever been watching us though?

No one is watching us as parents or as adults. No one is making sure we are cutting the turkey the right way or setting the table perfectly. No one is guiding us. But then, I realize that no one has ever truly been watching us. Even as a kid. My memories of my childhood, the early years, are of me alone. Alone in my bedroom playing with barbies. Alone in the basement playing with toys. Alone in the living room watching Sesame Street. Alone/with David in the family room watching R rated movies in elementary school with no adult supervision. No one ever watched us. Not like we watch kids today.

So why am I expecting anything? Why does it surprise me that I’m just figuring it out? That I’m just making it work? It’s always been this way. It’s all I’ve ever known. And I’m not entirely sure if that’s a good thing or bad. Are we meant to be coddled? To have our hands held through every stage of life? Or are we meant to jump without a parachute at every turn?

Maybe life isn’t about being watched. Maybe that’s not the point. What if it’s really all about taking chances? What if life is meant to be full of risk and trial and error? What if we’re never meant to be guided? We’re never meant to wait for permission. To wait for the handoff. We all just figure it out as we go. We all grow little by little each day with every experience and it happens so gradually that we don’t notice it until one day we’re sitting around the Thanksgiving table watching the children playing and the elders napping and it suddenly dawns on us that we are now the adults. That we are now in charge. It’s jarring because it feels sudden. But it’s not. Everything has been working up to this moment. All of our moments lead up to today and we did it on our own. And that’s OK.

I love you, Mom.

Love,

Rache

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