Grow up

Several months ago I made a list of everyone I knew who was pregnant. It was actually a necessity, this list, because I couldn't keep track of all my knocked-up friends. Then, as the weeks passed, the list split into two parts: those who were still pregnant and those who had had their babies. Each side would ebb and flow as people gave birth, and new people became pregnant.

At the moment, there are 26 names on that combined list.

A couple of weeks ago I went back east to visit my college roommates, JoAnne and Becca. JoAnne had just given birth to her first child, and Becca was due in two months with her second child. Conveniently for me, they live about 20 minutes from one another, so I got to meet the baby and the bump at the same time.

It was a good visit, but when I came home I fell into a bad place. It was a short-lived, but surprisingly deep depression. The stay-in-your-pajamas-all-day kind of depression.

"Do you want a baby right now?" asked my friend Emily, as we dissected my mood over lunch one day.

"No," I said. "I really don't. But you know, I'd like to be able to afford a baby right now. Or a house. You know, what got to me even more than the babies was their homes. They're not gigantic or ornate or anything, but they're their homes, that they own, with wallpaper that they chose themselves and color-coordinated paint. They have guestrooms and playrooms for their kids. They have decks. Monte would kill for a deck."

I poked at the ice in the bottom of my glass with a straw. "I don't feel like a grown-up," I said.

"Eh," said Emily, giving a half-shrug. "I hear it's overrated."

But I wasn't sure.

Last night I lay on the couch, half-comatose, nodding in front of a nature documentary on PBS. "What are you watching?" asked Monte.

"Something about elephants," I mumbled, eyelids drooping.

"You're falling asleep," said Monte. "Come on, let's go to bed."

I pushed myself into a sitting position and immediately the change of elevation set me to sneezing. "Damn," said Monte, handing me the Kleenex box, "you're having a bad allergy day, aren't you?"

For I'd been sneezing all afternoon. Actually, I'd been sneezing for two days straight. "I think it's the dust," I said. "The fan is kicking it up." 90-degree temperatures this weekend led us to drag the rotary fan out of the closet. I sniffled miserably, shuffling to the bathroom.

"Or it could be the mold," I said, looking up at the bathroom ceiling. I sneezed again. "I think I'm allergic to our apartment," I said.

"Can we move?" I asked Monte a few minutes later as I climbed into bed.

"Where do you want to move?" he asked me.

"Somewhere clean," I said. "To a place that has circulating air in the bathroom. And windows with cool, steel frames, not old splintery wooden ones that catch dust. And no Venetian blinds. I hate those things.

"And there should be marble counter tops," I continued, rolling onto my stomach.

"Marble?" asked Monte.

"Well, not tile," I said. "Not moldy, grody tile that catches all the dirty dishwater and never comes clean. Tiled counter tops are stupid."

"They are," Monte agreed.

"And it should come with a housekeeper," I said into my pillow. "And a vacuum that actually works."

"And a place for your sewing machine," added Monte. "By the way, can we move that off the kitchen table?"

"No, I'm not done with it yet."

"But are you sewing anything right now?"

"No. But I might soon." I lifted my head to sneeze again. "And we could have kitchen chairs that match, and aren't broken."

"And a dishwasher," he said emphatically. "And a deck!"

"Yeah," I said. "And an office that's not in the living room. With our own desks."

"That sounds nice," said Monte.

"It would be nice," I said. "It would be a grown-up house. This is not a grown-up house. We couldn't have a baby in here. There's no room."

"We could put it in the walk-in closet," suggested Monte.

"No, my hula hoops are in there," I said.

Then we drifted off to sleep.

I've spent some time trying to decipher these pangs that I've been having, wondering if it's actually my biological clock that's beeping at me or something else, and I think it's this grown-up thing. It's this twenty-something feeling in my thirty-something life. This feeling of "I'm still here." (Not to be confused with that triumphant feeling of "I'm still here!", which is something altogether different.)

Yes, I'm still here. Still in this apartment with the too-thin walls and hand-me-down furniture. Still unemployed (or rather, unemployed again), uninsured, unmarried. I've done so much in my life in the last six years, run laps around my younger self, and yet I'm still here. Externally, nothing has changed. We haven't even rearranged the furniture in six years. Literally, I could probably go back in time, walk through my front door and not notice the difference.

And it's not like it's all bad. If it were, we wouldn't hesitate to make a change. But I like my furniture where it is. I don't really mind that my upstairs neighbor only knows two songs on the electric guitar. And I'm lucky enough to share this small space with such a likable guy. It is by no means a bad life we're living.

But I wouldn't say no to some forward momentum.

You hear that, Universe? I'm calling again.