CINCINNATI, OH
I awoke to the rumbling thunder in the early morning hours, just before the sun should have risen if not for the dark gray thunder clouds. I drifted in and out of sleep while the lightning flashed and the thunder boomed. The intense thunderstorms have been a dime a dozen in the past couple weeks, but what I find quite pleasant about this early wakeup, is that I'm the only one waking up. Last week, while in Chicago staying with my niece and nephew, the nightly thunderstorms kept everyone from sleeping. One loud crack would have my niece flying out of bed into the arms of the nearest grown-up, and while my tiny nephew didn't know enough to be afraid of the storms, he certainly wasn't sleeping through them.
One night, I laid in my niece's bed with her, fending off terror. As I lay awake, unaccustomed to sleeping with three night lights and bedtime music, I thought to myself, "this definitely makes me a grown-up." When the first of my peers bought a house, I remember talking about at what point one really becomes a grown-up. Surely it is hardly age, in this era of prolonged adolescence that stretches through college. For the overwhelming majority of us who aren't having offspring in our teens and twenties, that surely isn't it either. When Taryn moved into her house, we figured it was owning a lawnmower or major appliances that signaled true grown-up-hood. But as I watch this little person drift in and out of sleep, one paw slung across my chest, the other gripping a stuffed cow, I decide that when you reach the point of being able to slay the nighttime demons, be they thunderstorms or monsters, that's when you know you're a grown-up.
No comments:
Post a Comment