Just a moment, please?

So I was sitting in Osaka airport, taking up space at a starbucks after I fed the corporate beast 500 yen for a soy chai latte, and thinking. After months of spending all my mental energy on remembering scientific concepts I learned as a college freshman just thinking seemed a nice respite. Unfortunately, it seems after such mental expenditure, I don’t know how to just let my mind wander anymore.

To that end, as I sit here trying to get the rest of this drink down (I never drink coffee because it makes me super hyper and chai sugar filled lattes aren’t much better - plus starbucks always seems to give me a stomach ache) I was pondering adult life and how much things have changed in the last few months. It could be the contrast between teaching such young kids and working with mostly significantly older people that puts me in this grey area - but I am constantly finding myself weighing how the decisions I make and the things I do are so different than they would have been years, or months, before.

I used to wonder when exactly you became a grown-up. I guess I, like most kids, just thought you woke up old one day. Not necessarily old in the sense of age, but just... old. Of course as you age, you come to realize you don’t just turn old, you grow older.

While walking down the streets of Umeda this morning I tried to imagine what my seven-year-old self would think of me. If she is anything like my students perhaps she would find me fun, cute, a little loony and strangely enough, young. But I don’t feel youth the way my seven-year-old self did. Because that Nichole got bored waiting in starbucks at an airport, or window shopping in crowded Osaka malls. She didn’t have to remind herself how beautiful a walk through the park could be, or how much fun swimming in an ocean could be - because she just knew. She knew being outside was the best thing in the world and watermelon and a hose on a hot summer day was heaven. Now I find myself getting so caught up in life that I could the calories on my summer ice cream cones and swim in heated pools in the middle of the night to burn off those calories and avoid the sun.

Would she be ashamed? Would she think I was silly? Or would she say - ‘Nichole you’re a grown-up’. I certainly feel like a grown up sometimes - at least until I talk to my colleagues with families and ‘real’ lives. So could we say being a grown up is just being grown a few years longer? Is it even really about years? Sometimes I feel an awful lot more grown than some of my peers - hell even of some people my senior. I certainly look at college students now and think of how young they are sometimes. It is in those times that I wonder if perhaps I traded lack of responsibility for freedom, and if I can go back temporarily and entertain the other choice.

When I went home to America 2 months ago to visit my mom who was recovering from surgery but hadn’t begun treatment yet (just setting the stage so you don’t think I am crazy selfish for what comes next) and I found myself battling the urge to curl up on her lap and just bawl. Not necessarily because she was sick, for those tears had to be shed in private where she couldn’t see, but for the loss of my own ability to fulfill that very urge. For the loss of my own innocence. For the ability to leave her house without her asking me where I was going, who with and when I could be home. In some twisted way, I wanted her to ask me. I wanted her to take some of that freedom away from me. Wished she would say “be home by 12” instead of “see you in the morning, good night.” I never did curl up in her lap for fear she might mistake those tears for my own loss as tears of misplaced faith in her ability to battle the demons raging within her.

Someday I will have children of my own, likely not too far in the future, and is the day when my own child curls up in my lap the sign I have become an adult? Or was it when I graduated from college? When I stopped using my mom as an alarm clock? When I could cook my own breakfast? Or were these all just little steps in the long process of growing - one I sometimes wish I could turn around. Because after all, there is only so much ‘up’ growing we can do before we have to start growing back down again.

I guess the point of this whole philosophical wandering is more than pining over the loss of my childhood, it is a memo to try and slow down the ticking of the clock so I don’t look back on a disappointed 22-year-old Nichole and wish I had ‘grown-up’ different. I hope to never forget to remind myself how beautiful the stars are at night, to never forget to look out the plane window at the clouds, to never fight the urge to swim in the ocean. I don’t ever want to feel too “grown-up” to enjoy my life, to be silly, or to make mistakes.

So with one foot in the door on the path to a hopeful career as a doctor and half my body out the door on my Japan adventure, I left reminding myself to live each moment 100%. To embrace the patience I seem to have developed and rather than wonder ‘am I there yet?’ think instead ‘that cloud kind of looks like a turtle.’

I have a lot of blog entries to post and a lot of experiences to record, but I wanted to take a moment to remind myself - and maybe remind you - that while all those experiences are unforgettable, I have to promise myself to try and make every day if not unforgettable, at the least, unregrettable.

Love.