I always had this image in my head of what it would be like when I was grown up, married, and had kids. After I tucked my darlings into bed, I pictured myself spending calm, quiet evenings sitting on a comfortable couch, a good reading lamp by my side, while my husband and I engaged in parallel erudite pursuits, like reading classic literature. as some soft bossa nova or classical music played in the background. The other night as I was driving alone in the car, I flipped to some Stan Getz and it immediately triggered this mental image I dreamt of for oh so many years. I had to laugh at the great disparity between fantasy and reality.
For one, my fantasy furniture was far more colonial and traditional than my current modern stylings (my dream scene involved a floral couch with queen Anne’s legs?). The nicely appointed room gives way to a scene which often involves the ruined remnants of a blanket fort or errant nerf darts. Truthfully, very few of my evenings are spent reading with the companionship of a nice lamp. My nights are usually spent painting while my husband works on finishing off the basement. Or it involves sorting, or folding laundry, while taking in a foreign film from the Netflix queue. Then there is the fact that my house is rarely quiet; beyond the children, the noisy dishwasher drones on, the phone rings, the sound of audio books mumble through the doors of my children’s bedrooms.
I do still like soft bossa nova (but it tends to be reserved for the rare occasions when I am driving alone) and the classical usually gets the boot in favor of something peppier to drown out the child noise, keep me awake, and encourage me to pick up the pace through my chores. The one thing most impossible to capture from my childhood vision is that calm stillness I thought there would be. I imagined grown up life to be more psychically unfettered. Absent from my vision were the seemingly endless lists of responsibilities begging for attention, things and people to be worried about, juggled, and tended to. I naively expected adulthood to be peaceful, to be characterized by the carefreeness only a child brain assumes because it knows nothing different. Even if I bought that couch, cleaned up, shut off the dishwasher, turned on that Chopin, and cracked that book of short stories, I still don’t think I could re-create that feeling.
So I have to know did you have any fantasy screen shots of “grown up life” that have proved to be less than authentic? How has your reality differed from your “when I grow up” fantasy? What has surprised you the most?