Well, at least for her parents.
Our oldest child turned 20. (She’s waiting for that second digit to become a ‘1’ before she sees it as major.)
As strange as it is to mentally still feel about 25, but have children who are 20 and 18, there’s something still stranger about having kids who are adults.
And that’s when they start acting like adults.
You know, doing things like voluntarily cooking meals with vegetables. Or running their own errands. Or looking into renting apartments near college.
Wait, just a few minutes ago, weren’t we nagging them to clean their bedrooms? Have a nutritious snack? Do their homework?
And just a few seconds ago, weren’t we worrying about them when they’re away, trying to figure out what it really means when they answered the classic questions: “Where are you, what are you doing, and when will you be home?” with “out, stuff, sometime.”
It becomes even more surreal when the kids turn the tables and start worrying about the parents.
For example, the other night, my husband and I were out running our own errand to buy a birthday gift for the soon-to-be 20-year-old. While we were out, we decided to have dinner at a fast-food hamburger place.
And we felt a little guilty about that.
After all, if our daughters knew, they’d no doubt give us lectures about eating healthily. About the importance of at least considering our arteries.
We noted the parents at the fast-food place with their little kids. We were tempted to warn them — ah, yes, laugh it up now over your Happy Meals, but sooner or later, you, too, will be sneaking around in middle age to get a fast-food fix behind your kids’ backs... But we didn’t.
We thought that might seem just a little weird, and who’d believe us, anyway? We never believed such warnings.
Anyway, after that, we purchased a birthday gift for the 20-year-old — practical items she’d requested, the days of princess- pink cute toys long behind us — and just as we were putting the gifts in our trunk, my cellphone rang.
The call was from our 18-year-old.
Nope, she didn’t want something from us. There wasn’t a problem, except she just wanted to know where we were.
Why, she’d come home from work only to find her parents not at home. And no note! Were we OK, she wondered? Had we had dinner? Where were we, what were we doing, and when would we be home?
We resisted the temptation of answering “out, stuff, sometime.”
She was waiting for us in the living room when we got home. We explained that by this time next year, both she and her sister would be away to school, and while we understood how scary it would be to have their parents living on their own, they’d just have to let go of checking on us all the time, and trust that we’re (mostly) behaving when we’re out, and that we’re getting home safely and at a reasonable hour.
She said she’d work on that.
We didn’t mention the cheeseburgers and fries.
Sharon Short’s column runs Monday in Life. Send email to sharonshort@sharonshort.com.
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