Growing Up

Note - I have been away for a month now, regrouping. I hope the new weekly series of writings reflect the efforts of that hiatus!


I have decided to grow up. Yes, I know. I have been avoiding this decision for many years. It pains me to grow up but grow up I must.

For years I have made career decisions based on my own belief that somewhere, somehow, things would be better. Schools would change, people would change, the light of reason would suddenly charge like a lightning bolt from the sky and there would be one school that would capture my fancy and I would be happy forever.

Alas, it is not to be.

Lost in the crossfire of my incessant job hunting has been my son. I raised him to be a free thinker. I raised him to be independent. I raised him to live a life railing against the masses. He is a great kid. I am very lucky.

However, (and you knew there had to be a “however”) what I have not done is instill in him the word “compromise.”

Like most parents I wanted to create a better version of myself. I had to compromise my whole life. Of this I am not proud, but we do eat, we do have a roof over our heads and, oh, there is the travel thing – in six months we have been to Dubai, Greece, Bahrain and Sri Lanka. Still, I should have done better. Perhaps a little more structure would have been in order. I ask myself all the time – what could I have done differently? I do not know. Perhaps we did the best with the deck we were dealt. Like every parent, I hope so.

Now it is time for this Peter Pan mom to stop. I have a job with people I like. We have that roof – ever so tiny but it is a roof. I like the country. I get to go to Greece every summer. I do not have to pay for the airfare.

It is time to invest in retirement and my retirement plan is my son. Strangely, he does not cringe in fear every time he hears this. (Like I said, he is a great kid.) My challenge for the new year is to help him take the considerable skills he possesses and mold them into a career. Then I can stop providing for him and he can stick me in a tiny home somewhere and I can homeschool my grandchildren – when he can afford to give them to me.

Growing up also means being a realist. Realism is something this big picture person does not do well. I am all about possibilities – what happens if we do this, or what happens if I do that. Great but when you are approaching 60 and your son (AKA retirement plan) is underemployed possibilities do not put you in that tiny home teaching your as yet unborn grandkids.

I have always said that between the two of us my son has always been the adult. He is the old soul, I am the young soul. He is wise beyond his years, I am the free spirit who says “Sri Lanka, sure, don’t know where it is but let’s make those plane reservations then look at a map!” My son would get out the map first, do some research, then decide, or not, about those tickets. When the Bible verse “and a little child shall lead them” was written, it was obviously talking about us. (Okay, not so little. My son is 6 feet tall.)

But even that is not enough. If I want to help my son embrace his dreams, I must lead by example and embrace mine. He knows how I feel about the state of public education. He has watched me go to work day after day after day doing things that I know defy rational thought. He knows how hard this is. He appreciates my sacrifice, theoretically on his behalf. Deep down inside both my old soul son and I know the truth. I, the brave one, have played it safe. I know I can teach, I know I make a difference, I like to eat and so I persist. Approaching 60 is a great age. You are young enough to achieve your dreams and old enough to know time is surely passing.

So Peter Pan mom is choosing at last to grow up – to stop job hunting for me and to start supporting my son in his search. While I am at it, I need to face the reality of my own life. I need not to spend so much time at work that I come home exhausted at 4 pm, leaving no time for the writing, the research, the projects that bring so much joy to my life – whenever I get the time to do them.

This sounds so easy. It is not. You get comfortable, you get cozy, you get lazy.
Growing up is not easy. Peter Pan had a point. Endless youth has its rewards. There comes a time when endless youth must, okay, end. Reality must hit eventually and yet….

When I start publishing on a regular basis, when the book gets done and the projects start to flow and my son is no longer underemployed the pressure will be off, the creative juices will flow I will be, in a manner of speaking, reborn.

I will be all grown up, but I will never, never be old.