“I wish you’d grow up”

When I was younger and living in the Golden State, my grandmother across the country used to send us money for Christmas. Each person got a set amount usually in the middle of December to spend as we pleased. My parents would take us shopping in the weeks leading up to Christmas so that we could spend our Christmas money and that whatever we bought would be wrapped up and put under the tree for Christmas morning from Gram

I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but I know I was a teenager in high school in the mid 1990s at the time of this memory. I had gathered some Classic Disney CDs and put them into my basket for purchase and made my way to the front of the store where my parents were waiting. My father was perusing my choices when his eyes came upon the two CDs amongst the other now forgotten treasures. I remember that he rolled his eyes, shook his head as he scoffed and then said “I wish you’d grow up.”

Being the former people pleaser that I was …. I almost put the CDs back. But the marches-to-the-beat-of-her-own-drum rebel in me won that day and I bought them despite the disapproval. The CDs were wrapped and then opened on Christmas morning. They were listened to often in my bedroom on the boombox I spent an entire summer saving money for, with the volume turned down low so I wouldn’t annoy my father. I sang and danced along with them, but there was a nagging feeling that what I enjoyed was deemed childish.

That memory and the nagging feeling have both stuck with me for nearly thirty years. Sometimes, while belting out a Disney tune in the privacy of my own home, I get a twinge of guilt for not “growing up.” But I have come to realize that in the nearly 46 years I have lived on this earth, there is always going to be someone who doesn’t think I am being “grown up” enough no matter what I do and that every single one of us are just learning to live and age the way we want to.

A geocaching friend of mine usually posts this quote in his logs….

“We don’t stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing.”

– attributed to George Bernard Shaw

And I believe it’s true. The ones that remain young at heart…. well they never grow old even as others might wish they would.

I often joke that I am a Toys R Us kid and that I need an “adultier” adult sometimes. I have unicorns all over my house and still sleep with a teddy bear. I let my imagination run wild, dreaming of and then writing about, fairies and elves, sprites and dragons, wizards and halflings and Portal Seekers and magic. I wear sparkly face powder every day at the full time job and cover everything I can with stickers. I try to live this life believing in the good in people until they show otherwise, looking for glimmers of magic and treating life as an adventure to live. I wave emphatically at adults and children to make them smile. I find the love and hope, peace and joy and even the light in as many moments as possible. I play as much as I can and as often as I can. And I still belt out Disney songs as the mood allows, much to the chagrin of the felines who live in my abode.

Those CDs I bought… I still have them too, living as relics to a time where I wanted to be “old enough to know better” yet remain a fun loving child at heart. As the quote goes… “Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional”(although who knows exactly who said it first!) Besides, I can’t really act my age, since I have never been this age before! What I do know is that this story I am writing will never be a “mature” one since i will continue to remain as young at heart and as whimsical as I can for as long as I can.

Never grow up….

Stay magical, friends.

Write your own story!

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