When Do You Become an Adult?

Turning forty, as many of us have realized, has been a time of reflection on how much of an adult you have become.  Many of us own a home, negotiate the purchase of our own cars, decide on where to vacation, where to eat, how the bills get paid and maybe even become a parent.  Its interesting to finally understand that for roughly half of our lives, someone else, typically a parent, made the majority of our decisions for us.  Its only been roughly 20 years since we've had full reign of our destiny on a daily basis.  For those that have been to their 20+ year high school reunion, we know that those decades have passed faster than we ever thought possible.

But does the age of majority truly start at 18?  This past week, for me at least, I found out that being an adult starts at 39.  For me, I have found that I am truly an adult with the passing of my father about a week ago.  I am no longer able to have a chance to ask for advice and I am unable to have a living historian of my life a phone call away.  Not that he ever really played those roles for me, but having the comfort of knowing that I could at least ask someone some questions, some deep-rooted and meaningful questions, gave me a little comfort, because I was so young then; just one week ago.  I understand now that I was truly a child, someone's child.  I can understand that I no longer have the privilege of falling under the auspices of an older generation.  Even though I am extremely close to my mother, we speak daily (inset your umbilical cord comments here) I now feel that I am THE generation.

I became an adult this week...Three months before my 40th birthday.  I wish I could have stayed a child for a lot longer.

What Are Those Two Circles?

After almost a week in the NC mountains, living without air conditioning (because you don't need it,) sleeping without medication (because you don't need it,) and eating whatever is in front of you (because...,) I started to see how my children perceive summer vacation.  It became blatantly apparent to me that summer is truly the culmination of the entire year.  I'm not sure why God put summer in the middle of year so we just get confused as to when the year actually starts and ends.  If He just made the hot/fun months from October - December, then we could start the year in January with school and work until the beginning of "Summer" at the end of September.  Summer would run its course for the remainder of the year and then January rolls around again for school.

But noooooooooo.  Mittendrinen (please Google for my gentile friends), we have to have summer right in the middle of everything.  This just shows that Julius Cesar was as vain as they come; naming the most fun month, July, after himself and putting it at a time of the year where everyone is looking forward to saying his name all time.  "Let's wait until July to go on vacation, I can't wait until July so I don't have to be in school, lets not pay the electric bill until July" (maybe not that one.)  But you get the picture.

All kids do is look forward to the summer!!!  I was/am one of those kids.  I loved that July brought me the time to go on a hike with family.  I loved that we were forced to talk to each other and sing songs with each other.  I loved that we can stay up late and tell stories to each other.  In actuality, I thank Julius, and God, for giving me the summer in order to remind me how important it is to just BE with one another.

So there I am, on the phone with my wife, recapping their summer day and she says to me, "your daughter (4 years old) looked at the dog as it was walking away from her and asked, 'what are those two circles on the bottom of the dog?'"  Another reason that summer is so special...the endless learning opportunities.