little sarah Big World

Saturday Morning, After the Sleepover

“Sarah, why is your kitchen in your bedroom?”

“Why do you drink out of jars?”

“Why don’t you have a car?”

My 20-something life is all but unfathomable to my little sister. And she’s not the only one. Even I have to question my methods from time to time. Like at the wedding last weekend, with the other bridesmaids in graduate school, or working professionally, making big career strides and living in big cities.

I realized, apart from graduating college, I have almost no claim to adulthood–I don’t own a home, or a car. I’m not married, I don’t have children. I have nothing but the vaguest notions about grad school. I don’t have a full-time job, or health insurance.

I am a bike-riding, studio-living, self-indulgent young woman. And most days I am okay with that. But sometimes I see myself through another’s eyes, and I have to wonder…

…then Rosie tells me that her favorite thing is sleeping over and walking to the coffee shop on the corner in the morning. I like to think that she’ll always remember that, the way I still remember a sleepover with Aunt Angie when I was little–like I was being allowed a peek into adult life.

I mean, somebody has to be the “single” Auntie or sister, the one with time and space for sleepovers. The one who will take you for hot chocolate and bagels. The one who is, like Sandra Cisneros, “nobody’s mother and nobody’s wife.”

*       *       *

I am okay with being that person. Most of the time.