The Changing of the Guard

The idea of replacing their parents in the workforce, of a societal "changing of the guard," isn't one that generally occurs to children. They play, learn and dream of being astronauts, dancers, rock stars, doctors and marine biologists, thinking of Mom and Dad as one of their most rock-steady constants, perhaps hearing them sigh over getting older but not fully understanding the eventual switch that will take place: one day, they'll wake up and be the ones rushing around, throwing lunch(es) together, coordinating gym shoes and work clothes and scheduling meetings, while their parents will have the luxury of deciding what they want to do that day, where they want to play and with whom.

One of the oddest sensations of becoming an independent adult has been watching that switch take place and strangest of all, being aware of it. My dad's taken up new hobbies to fill his time in retirement as I've given up old ones, sacrifices to the 40-hour work week and its commute in exchange for a salary, benefits and financial self-sufficiency. My mom used to marvel at the number of books I read in the time it took her to get through one, as she struggled to read a few pages in bed at night before succumbing to the exhaustion of working a stressful full-time job, running herd on me and managing a household. Now when she tells me what she's reading, I rarely have anything to add to the conversation - I'm still only halfway through the same books I was the last time we talked about reading.

The thing that initially made me aware of these changes, ridiculous as it sounds, was my caffeine intake. My mom's not much of a coffee person, but she had a Diet Coke at her elbow most hours of the day when I was growing up, and stopped worrying about buying it "Caffeine Free" once I was in my teens and drinking caffeinated beverages with my friends anyway. I scolded her about not drinking enough milk, which I downed by the gallon, and ingesting too much caffeine, as well as carbonation that would make her more susceptible to the osteoporosis that whittled my grandmother down from 5'1" to somewhere around 4'6".

With the exception of my hellishly over-scheduled sophomore year in college and the summer of sleepy caffeine-withdrawal headaches that followed it, I've never found caffeine to be a necessary part of my day. I'm still not physically addicted to it (anymore), but there are days I find myself detouring to Au Bon Pain on my way in to the office, needing a cup of coffee to wake me up, or dashing out for an over-sized bottle of Diet Coke at lunch to extend my morning workout energy kick into the afternoon. There have even been a couple of days when, succumbing to the demands of a muddled brain and a need to be fully functioning, I've done both.

My mom, on the other hand, has stopped buying Diet Coke for herself altogether and drinks milk with her lunch everyday. (My dad, however, is a four-shots-a-day guy (espresso), and guzzles Diet Coke the way I do water - and he's not about to volunteer to break the habit!)

It's this kind of daily minutiae that occasionally make me blink in surprise and realize that I'm now the one wrapped up in the world of work - the ups, the downs, the stress - even though somewhere in my head, "the working world" still means my parents, not me, a distinction reinforced by memories of work-related dinner conversation going back as far as I can remember.

I don't usually think about being an adult, because without a mortgage, car payments (thank goodness for the Metro!) or any insurance premiums other than the annual minimum on my apartment, I don't usually feel like one. My post-college 20s up to this point occasionally feel something like a second round of early adolescence: a little awkward, with one foot still in college, trying to figure out how to be an adult and who, exactly, the adult version of Jessalyn Pinneo is. It can be frustrating, uncomfortable, stressful and confusing, but the reward of discovering who I am and making my own way is more than worth it.