Am I A Grown Up?

I had a few weird moments over the weekend...

I was thinking when D, my nephew, invited me to "hang out" with them, "What could I possibly have in common with these kids?" When I was their age, I had a baby. I didn't go to my friend's house to get drunk, I didn't party, I didn't do anything bad (are you reading this mom?). Reluctantly I went to "hang out" with my 20 year old nephew and his friends for the evening. I have to say that I was surprised. It's not what I expected, although I don't know what I expected really. It was enlighening I guess. They seemed to show a genuine interest in things I had to say. It was a new thing for me. Maybe I'm just young enough (I mean, ffs, I'm only 9 years older..) to still be "one of them". I don't feel like it though...I definitely feel out of the loop. When did that happen? When did I go from being a kid to being "an adult"?

I was talking to my nephew and his friends about being their age and what it was like and stuff. I told them that although I was older than them by almost 10 years, in a lot of ways they had lived more of life than I had. I did everything backwards, I told them. I had a baby first and now I'm getting around to doing things that I like to do. They seemed to agree with me. To them the thought of having a child at their age was unthinkable...I told them that I had thought that too "when I was their age". I felt like an old-timer. They were kind of silent for a minute, as if they were pondering it, and then the conversation went on.

Later that night I had to go to the store and one of the girls asked to tag along. She asked me a bunch of questions in the car...how many times have I been married, how did I meet them, why did we break up, how old was I, how old was my daughter, how old was I when I had my daughter, wasn't I on the pill?, what did you do when you found out you were pregnant?...etc. etc. She seemed really curious.
I told her I have met people on the Internet and she asked "what do your parents think of that?" I had to laugh...cause you know, I'm 29, I stopped caring what they thought a long time ago, but I guess to a 17 year old it's a viable question. I told her everything she wanted to know and I explained to her that although everything turned out ok, if I knew then that I would have gotten pregnant, I would have been much more careful. I told her that it was by sheer luck (and an awesome amount of family support) that I was able to be where I am today. It's all relative, but in the grand scheme of things it's not that bad I don't guess.

I hung out with them that night and again the next night when we all lit off fireworks and drank beer and ate ribs to celebrate...oh yeah, Independence Day. I suppose you could say we were all celebrating our own individual Independence's, whatever they might be. They could celebrate being young, or whatever, and not having to be in school or being away from their parents, or even just not having to work. For me it was a little more deep than that. It was realizing that I have been largely independent for a long time and I haven't required too much assistance from anyone. I've been incredibly lucky. My life could have been a lot different but I think I have come out on the other side of something major and for me that's a reason to celebrate. I don't often think about that and I guess the girl asking me all of those questions the other night made me think about it. On a smaller scale, I was "celebrating" my temporary independence from being a parent for the summer...something that is only fun for a couple of weeks before I start to miss her and want her to come home again.

All in all, it was a good weekend.

We spent the majority of the next morning (that would be yesterday...) cleaning up the mess of bottle rockets, broken plastic casings, firecrackers, beer bottles, and cigarette butts. So THAT'S what it's like to clean up after a party...until then I really didn't know. I felt tired...exhausted really. I wanted to sleep but I wasn't tired. (Um, I think the term for that is HANGOVER)

When I left my mom's house my nephew and his friends (who were still there...) were planning on going out to the lake. They invited me to come along but I had other stuff to do so I told them maybe another time.

time for me to go back to being a grown up...