Adulthood

Although I've considered myself to be an adult for many years, living in an apartment on my own has really caused me to reflect about my upbringing.

I'm so grateful to parents who made me have chores. I'm glad that I know how to do my own laundry, how to clean, how to change a lightbulb, etc.

I'm also grateful that those same parents who let me be my own person while being there to support me in the tough stuff. After my friend helped me get my TV to my new place, I spent Saturday night putting together a TV stand that I'm borrowing from my generous older brother who can't use it for the foreseeable future because of his kids. It was a sort of comedy of errors as I tried to get the pieces together, and I finally did it. I felt pretty good about it. I even managed to get the TV up onto the stand. Feeling like a completely empowered, capable woman, I headed to bed. However, there was a tiny voice inside my head that was worried that the TV was going to come crashing down. Empowered, strong Liz proved to be right - the TV stayed in place. I was still very nervous about it. My parents were at my apartment yesterday, and I told my dad about the TV stand and showed him my work. He quickly tested its stability, and then proclaimed it a job well done. Victory!

Last night, while changing a strange tiny lightbulb in my ceiling fan, I somehow managed to remove only the glass around the bulb without any of the parts on the inside or the part that screws in (I may be an adult, but I do not know the names of lightbulb parts). I actually laughed out loud when it happened. No one was here, so I just enjoyed the good laugh by myself and put the lightbulb somewhere where it wouldn't injure me later.

This morning, I was talking with my parents after somebody's mother and I went to the gym. We were eating breakfast, and I was explaining the lightbulb incident. I started to explain that I was pretty sure that I had read or seen that you remove those leftover bulb parts with a potato, and my dad piped in, "Do you want me to come over and take care of it for you?"

Yes. Yes I do. I do not want to electrocute myself. I'm independent, but only to a certain point. And after my dad shows me how to do it, I'll be able to do it on my own the next time it happens. He's a great teacher.

Today, I needed to get some lightbulbs, and I had mentioned that to somebody's mother earlier. She told me that she had to go to a store nearby the hardware store and offered to pick up the bulbs for me.

This evening, when I picked up the bulbs, she mentioned that some of them had been hard to find, and she had actually ended up going to an additional store (not at all near the first) to obtain them. Pretty sweet, huh?

With a mom and a dad like that, full of support for this new stage in my life and completely willing to help when I get a bit stuck, there's no way I'm going to fail.