“You're Going To Be A Grownup For A Very Long Time.”

by Alice Henry Whitmore

“Don’t be in such a hurry,” my wise mother used to say. “You’re going to be a grownup for a very long time.”  

During this period of pandemic pandemonium, I’ve had time on my mind as well as on my hands. Mostly as in “gosh time goes by so quickly.” I don’t know about you, but it seems like the part of the day where I’m drinking coffee turns into the part of the day where I’m drinking wine alarmingly fast.

One of my pandemic projects has been sorting through photos. One in particular, of my daughter wearing a pair of cowboy boots, got my memory wheels turning. These were my cowboy boots, and on her toddler body they reached practically to her armpits. But I remember her striding around in them any chance she got. (Yes, I owned cowboy boots. I had three pair, actually. Cowboy-boot-wearing was sort of a “thing” back in the eighties, at least in the Ad Biz. I still have the black-and-gold ones; I can hardly wait to flaunt them in public again.)

That photo with my daughter sporting my boots got to me because, in it, my daughter was, of course, pretending to be a grownup. I used to do the same thing, only with my Mom’s black suede pumps instead of black lizard-skin cowboy boots.

I remember that I couldn’t wait to be a grownup. Not only did small-girl me raid Mom’s closet for high heels, I remember pre-teen me begging to paint my nails and wear lipstick. And, in junior high, I remember wheedling my way into a “training bra.” (Training for what exactly?)

Passing for “older” wasn’t easy for me. I was on the small side – the second-to-last in any line sorted by height—and, having an autumn birthday, the youngest in my class at school. To speed things up and to blend more easily with my classmates I would round my age up to the next birthday. (To this day I have to stop myself from doing this. “No! You are not 69 yet. That's not until November.”)

At any of these antics, my mother would simply shake her head and say, “Don’t be in such a hurry. You’re going to be a grownup for a very long time.”

I’ve been a grownup for quite a while now and, during this time of uncertainty, I must say the thought of being one “for a very long time” sounds pretty darned good. Let’s vow to stay safe and trust that my mom’s prediction holds true for all of us.

Alice Henry Whitmore is a writer and a keen observer of human nature, skills she honed while working on Madison Avenue for many years. Now that she is retired from the advertising business, she focuses her attention on her weekly humor blog—Lutheran Liar Looks at Life. Her pieces comment on situations and experiences that Lustre readers share.