I miss Double-Dutch and the ice cream trucks. I yearn for the restless summer days spent reading Right On! Magazines and waiting for someone to call my favorite video into Jukebox. I want to spend a whole day with Barbie, Skipper, Ken and their dream house. I’d like to dress-up my Cabbage Patches and line them along the bottom of my bed for some good conversation. I want to rock my Garanimals, OshKosh B’gosh, and take my Pillow Person to work. My daily workout will be the Get in Shape Girl Aerobics VHS tape. I want to watch the Snorks in the morning, My Little Ponies in the afternoon, and the Wonderful World of Disney at night. Yet these days are distant memory. I can’t bring that old thing back. I’m a grown-up and yet that inner little girl is still so alive in me.
I don’t want to over romanticize my child hood. Truth is I could never really jump Double-Dutch well, and after an unwise ice cream truck purchase I got a now and Later stuck to my 
tooth. Suffice it to say, I was plagued by a prevailing feeling of awkwardness and general insecurity due to relentless teasing for much of childhood years. Yet in still, the challenges of my adolescence pale in comparison to this grown folks business.
Being an adult is just soooooo hard. I know this may sound terribly naive, but I grew up in a very sheltered—if not charmed—household and I had no idea how rough it is out here. Just like the cliché. I had to be in the house before the street lights came on. I went to private schools from the 1st grade through the 12th. I never snuck out the house or snuck boys into the house, and come to think about it; just saying no wasn’t even an issue because no one ever asked me to try drugs.
Instead of narcotics, I took lessons: piano, flute, karate, swimming; jazz, tap, and ballet; gymnastics, ice skating, singing, and drama. Jack of many trades and masters of none, I had a wide breadth and depth of experiences in my youth. But summer camp at the Y, plays and musicals at the Kennedy Center, family reunions, barbecues, vacation bible schools, and Girl Scout Troop 695 are now just distant memories.
Today, I no longer face the hurdles of catty neighborhood girls and rude little boys at school. Now I’ve got real grown lady hurdles like a mortgage and a demanding career. I’ve got huge dreams that are going require a lot of sacrifice and really hard work to achieve. I have the responsibility to be a steward to the community and serve others, who are frankly enduring through situations far worst than I can even imagine. Therefore, I do not write this as a rant or a complaint about my life. I’ve got it pretty good. I have a great job, wonderful friends, a supportive family, and a burgeoning and always entertaining romantic life.
Yet, I just find the emotional, financial, political, and social roller coasters of adulthood a bit scary sometime. I’m not even a parent yet, and I’m not sure how people do it. I can’t imagine a mini-me depending on moi to take raise into adulthood. Even my dog looks at me with his pensive big brown eyes, as if to say “are you sure you got this mom, cause I dunno”?
With the stressors of unexpected expenses, crying babies, sick and aging parents and grandparents, tragic losses and disappointments, crisis of faith, new aches and pains arriving daily, not to mention overwhelming exhaustion and challenges to one’s core beliefs, it’s a wonder we don’t all throw in the towel.
Yet I am convinced that I was built for this: to live a life of meaning and purpose. I was always a mini-adult; my grandmother played a large part in raising me—which met I spent a lot of time at the Fort Lincoln Senior Village Recreation Center playing Kings in the Corner and Pity Pat with old ladies. I have a great understanding of people and I truly believe we are stronger and more capable than we give ourselves credit for. To be intentional about living a happy, fruitful, and productive adult life means to ensure your choices are aligned to your values, your path is ordered by love, and your tests are met with faith. Incongruence between any of these areas puts us in that uncomfortable sphere of fear, anxiety, and doubt. So love boldly, live fearlessly, and laugh always! Grown is indeed sexy 😉 Keep that inner child in you alive. Use your imagination and soar.
The Kabosh 