It's Difficult to Grow Up

I have to admit that I suffer slightly from Peter Pan syndrome. As I sit and listen to people around me wishing their lives away, I wish I was still at the bottom of my aunt's garden talking and playing with the fairies. We so often spend our time saying "I cannot wait for ..." followed by whatever it is we are looking forward, but in the process we really do seem to be wishing our lives away.  Why not embrace the here and now?  Why not live in the moment and enjoy each minute of each day? 

Then again, I often look at other adults around me, and I feel as if I have accidently stumbled into their world, and should not really be here at all, and especially not being a parent. But when I look a little closer it's like we are all playing pretend. Pretending to be adults, pretending to be responsible, when in actual fact we are all a little clueless to the real workings of life. Life, sadly is not like the movies, yet often we will try and emulate something fictional or blow it up to more than what it really is. No doubt, however, that this is great fun and beats the boredom of the mundane and everyday with which we are faced.  But wishing away that mundaneness, that "everyday" is wishing our lives away.   

So here I find myself, being "adult", making decisions which I know I am quite unqualified to. I look at the teenager, my gorgeous "17 going on 36" child, with his level head and his wits about him, and I wonder how he ever got that way. Can I take responsibility? Is the reason why he is so calm and levelhead because his mother is a complete and utter nutter? Maybe he has been fortunate enough to learn by my mistakes!  I also hope that he will learn by my enjoyment of life though - that his compulsion to constantly say "Mom, you're embarrassing me" will be overruled by a zest for life.  Funny enough during my holiday with him recently I had a "don't look now moment" where I suddenly saw him do a little dance move in the shopping mall in which we were walking, and that truly lifted my heart, to know that perhaps my passion for all things unusual is also making its mark on him.

Because, despite that I love that he takes life in his stride, I am also concerned that he will forget to put his toes in the sand, let his hair down and really, really live, and I can already see a seriousness overtaking where there should be a nothing more than a teenager enjoying his life. 

His younger days were made up of music and games and the beach and stories. We spent the rush hour traffic pretending to be drummers, with the music blasting into the car, singing on the tops of our voices and beating plastic bottles against the dashboard to the beat of the music. We spent days at the beach, peering into rock pools and "fish spotting", then catching the fish with a net, putting them into a bucket, then releasing them again. We spent mornings in the kitchen baking cupcakes that we decorated with every colour icing we could create. We spent early evenings tucked in bed reading stories about princes and ogres and firemen and adventure. We spent hours at the bottom of the garden too, talking to and playing with the fairies.

I loved that I did not have to make an excuse to play, to read, to laugh, to sing out loud, to have fun - that he was my excuse to play and enjoy life.  Now that he is older, even though we still spend much time together, the things we do have now changed. We ride our mountain bikes, I watch him (very proudly) at his track cycling, we go to movies and comedy shows, we go to pub quizs and dinners, we enjoy different forms of entertainment together.  We have "mature" conversations, and while I love this communication, I yearn for my child's mind.

Sadly for the teenager though, as I mentioned, I still have not quite grown up and I am often reprimanded and scolded for what can only be considered "embarrassing" behaviour. I hope when he gets older, when he becomes a father, when he reaches my age, however, that he will remember that if he lives like an old man he will become an old man. I hope he will roll on the lawn, and play hide and seek with his children and their friends. I hope he will remember to lift his face to the sunshine and laugh from the bottom of his heart.

I am still finding it difficult to grow up and then, when I feel staid and "adult", I remind myself that, as long as I do right by others and live with integrity, that I do not have to pretend to be anything that I not. There is a time for everything, but I think that time is what life is truly all about. Ours is limited, and we should be making the most of each and every moment, without feeling the need to account to or worry about what anyone else thinks.

I know the fairies at the bottom of my garden agree with me too!