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As a little girl I remember thinking twenty was old and in my Cindy make-believe world my dolls would all be married with children, living a fully grown up life. Later in my teens I’d look at the mid-twenty-year-olds and think how exciting their lives where,living away from home, studying, traveling and ever changing boyfriends. In my early twenties I’d be in awe of the thirty-year-olds and wonder in awe about their lives filled with houses, kids and spouses.

Looking upward at people older than me I always though how grown-up, adult they were and always thoughts that one day I too would grow up and be an adult.  But somehow that didn’t just “happen”, well it hasn’t yet anyway.

I still skip and dance around my home, I still giggle over immature jokes and oddities, I still believe in miracles and the unexpected. I get excited about Christmas and squeal with enthusiasm over gifts (both given and received), can’t contain myself when I find a promise of an adventure. I love reading fairy-tales and hope to find my prince one day. And  I still catch myself thinking about what I want to do “when I grow up”, wondering what I’ll do when I am an adult, dreaming about far-away future.

The odd thing is I am turning forty (yes 40) this year, a fully respectable and adult age. But I don’t feel much different from when I was six, fifteen, twenty or thirty, maybe a little wiser (only marginally) and definitely a lot heavier, but otherwise I am still me, curly hair and all. I do have a few more wrinkles around my eyes and have  a few white hairs sprouting amongst my dark locks, but I am still undeniably me.

So maybe this growing-up business is all just a big conspiracy, something that doesn’t really exist. We age but don’t really change, we learn how to behave and what is expected, but we flip the switch once we are alone. As country singer Bryan White so aptly but it”

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public

me at two-and-a-half, waiting to be all grown-up

me at two-and-a-half, waiting to be all grown-up