This morning I was listening to my 9 year old niece talk to my 17 year old daughter. She was talking about all the things that she wanted to be when she grew up. The list of possibilities was a mile long as she kept on naming them. A pharmacist, a veterinarian, an actor, a singer..... she said she just couldn't decide.
My 17 year old has a countdown on her phone counting down the days, the hours and the minutes until she turns 18. She's been reminding me on a daily basis how much longer she has. I, on the other hand, reach the age of 47 just 3 days before she reaches her milestone of the 18th birthday. That isn't nearly as exciting as turning 18 trust me!
I was folding the laundry while I was listening to their conversations about being excited about growing up and getting older. I just sat there silently taking it all in while I couldn't help but smile at some of the notions that they had. My daughter (Kailee) was giving my niece a very serious lecture on how before long she will need to start being more decisive about what she wants to be when she grows up.
I, in my silence, was thinking about how fast life goes by and how it only seems like yesterday that I was trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had made plans at that age of being a psychologist and solving all the world's problems one person at a time. But life happens and plans change sometimes along the way. I took a different course in life going into college the summer of my senior year and got burnt out fast on school. I started a new job, shortly after got married and then right off had a baby.
Getting out into the real world wasn't nearly what I thought it was going to be and all those dreams and fantasies of becoming a rich and famous doctor of the mind quickly faded away into oblivion. Don't get me wrong, I love the life that I have lived and have been very blessed along the way. I have 3 beautiful and amazing children to show for my decisions that I have made in life and I wouldn't trade them for any degree that hangs in a frame on an office wall with a black leather couch that is for the next appointment to walk in the door. Are there some things I would have done differently? Of course there are. But life consists of "what if's" and regrets of things that we should have done or not done. They are the lessons that we learn along the way.
It would be nice in life if we had a giant eraser that we could use when we look back on our past that we could simply use to wipe away things and do it over. I thought about that as I sat there and listened to the girls talk about their future and thought to myself how nice it would be to be their age and have basically a clean slate before me that I could chart out the plans for the years ahead and know then what I know now. I wanted to chime into the conversation and ask them if they knew how lucky they were that their lives are just starting and that they have so many choices to chose from and so many different paths that they can take. Kailee has known since before she started high school what she wanted to do with her life and has made plans and choices along the way to procure that dream of becoming an oncologist. She has never wavered from her charted path and is more determined every day to achieve that goal. While I am so extremely proud of her for working so hard towards making her dream come true - I am so glad that she has an open venue of choices in life that she can make because this new stage in her life is a brand new beginning.
Now I know that I can tell her and the other kids that being an adult is not all it's cracked up to be. That life is hard and the struggles are real. That turning the magic number of 18 is a big deal, but there are also a lot of consequences that come with becoming responsible for your own actions. I can sit them down for hours upon hours and tell them the things that I did wrong and hope that they learn from what I tell them. But I tried that one time with my oldest daughter Jess when she was making a choice that I knew in my heart what the end result would be. Her response to me? "Mom I have to make my own mistakes and learn my own lessons. Learning from your mistakes won't make me the person I need to be - but learning from my own will make me the person that you have become."
So....with that lesson learned I continued to sit there and let a 9 year old and a 17 year dwell on their dreams and let them believe that they can be whatever they want to be - because they can be. That's the whole purpose of having your whole life ahead of you - a blank slate to put on it whatever you want and to make your dreams come true.
Nope - growing up isn't what I thought it would be - but I am who I am for a reason and so shall they be.
