I spent yesterday in the ER with my dad. He and Mom were driving in from Alabama for Elizabeth's birthday and he started having some lower right quadrant pain about 8:30. By the time he got into town, it was to the point that he couldn't wait for a regular clinic visit, so off to the hospital we went. I was thinking appendix, but it turned out to be kidney stones. He's had them before, but the pain was in a different place this time, so he didn't recognize what was going on.
Mom was shaken up (as I would have been had it been my husband and us both away from our regular healthcare resources) so I was trying to take the adult role, monitoring what was going on and advocating for him as well as I could, and it occurred to me that I'm a grownup.
I'm not sure when this happened. I don't feel particularly grown up. I don't feel much different than I did at 25. I have a husband, a kid, a house, a mortgage, a car payment, and a stack of bills to pay every month, so I have all the trappings of grownup-hood, but there's no grownup inside. I'm just as scared today as I was when I left for college. (Well, maybe not THAT scared, but close.) I even have some grownup things that aren't just grownup things: they're middle-aged-grownup things, like blood pressure medicine, acid reflux, fiber supplements, and reading glasses. I'm also going to turn 50 this year. And I have high school classmates who are now raising their grandchildren.
So why did I have to keep reminding myself that I was a grownup yesterday?
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