Rocket Scientists, Mashed Potatoes, Ladders, and Poop Murals

     Despite my woeful lack of experience and qualifications, and contrary to my never-ending worries, my girls have turned out well. I'm having trouble accepting their grownup selves because I knew them when, so to speak. It boggles my mind to see my oldest daughter J giving presentations on aerospace engineering and to see her being responsible for repairs on the space shuttle (the space shuttle!) because I knew her when she had trouble memorizing her multiplication tables, and when she dressed up as a vampire for Halloween, and when the only rocket ship she did repairs on was a refrigerator box she painted in the backyard. 

     It's inconceivable that C has a degree in Anthropology and is getting married soon because the C I still see is the four year old who did a booty shake to Jingle Bell Rock that was caught on camera, or the C who was afraid of the plastic crocodile in the Crocodile Dentist game, or the C who saved McDonald's french fries in her closet, or the C who did whatever her older sister told her and repeated everything she said--how can she go first into this new adventure called marriage?

     Third daughter A is now a psychologist who will be leading group therapy sessions at a prestigious hospital. My little A leading group therapy? A, who as a toddler, used to wait until someone was watching and then scramble to the top of anything she could climb, just for the thrill of seeing us run to save her? A, who cut her finger on a toy box, had to have four nurses hold her down so they could bandage it, and then tore the bandage off on the way out of the hospital, insisting, "You do it, Mommy. You do it." The A who has given me more pictures and videos of her making funny faces or dressed in crazy costumes than my hard drive can hold is now a psychologist?  How is that possible?

     And even my baby M is freaking me out. M, who as a very young entrepreneur, tried to convince her father to buy sticks from her for $3 a pop, M who did a whole song and dance routine with a bar of hotel soap as a toddler ("This is my soap, it's not your soap . . ."),  M, who could play for hours marching the figures from the nativity up and down a yardstick bridge, is about to graduate from high school and go off to a top university in the fall. She is already working with a film production company and is well on her way to being a successful filmmaker.

     If I'm having trouble seeing my adult daughters as they are instead of seeing the children they once were, how do the parents of movie stars, surgeons, politicians, etc. take their adult children's success seriously when they remember the braces and acne, the awkwardness of puberty, the embarrassingly public  childhood gaffes, the fear of the dark, the bed-wetting, and giving them the birds and bees talk? How can you watch fans mobbing your celebrity son without remembering him crying because no one would let him sit next to them on the bus? Or watch your daughter become CEO of a Fortune 500 company and not think about the D she got in sixth grade math? 

     I guess that's what helps most of us keep our feet on the ground---the fact that we have family and friends who knew us before we were so highfalutin. My mother passed away in 1991, but I'm sure if she was here and was watching me give a book reading, she would be thinking, "How can she stand up and speak before all these people when she used to hide behind my skirt anytime I asked her to say hi to one of my friends? And she writes whole books now when I was lucky to get two letters a year from her while she was in college?"

     Others may look at you in awe as a movie star, a cardiologist, a rocket scientist, or a CEO, and your family is surely impressed with what you have accomplished, but don't think they have forgotten that you once spread the contents of your diaper all over the nursery wall or asked if you had to steer while using cruise control on the car or peed your pants when you thought your grandfather's snoring was a bear attack. They remember that the great speaker of today couldn't pronounce spaghetti until he was seven and the renowned beauty had to take her cousin to prom.

     They know all your secrets. And they aren't afraid to share them if you get a little too big for your britches.

     Part of me thinks that would be a good thing. Part of me wants to talk to my surgeon's mother and hear how he had to be reminded every single day to take the trash out or how he mixed his peas in his mashed potatoes every time she served them and still does when he's not out at a fancy restaurant. It would make him more human and less intimidating. But another part of me knows that when you are about to let someone cut into your insides, putting your life in their hands, it's better to see them as super-human and better to not know that he couldn't master tying his shoes until he was eight years old. So I haven't asked for his mother's phone number yet.

     Many times in interviews with the family members of politicians, movie stars, famous artists, etc., the question, "What was he/she like as a child?" will come up. The interviewee will invariably paint a positive picture--"He was such a creative child!" "Animals loved her!" or "He learned to speak at an early age," when what they are remembering is the "creative" poop mural on the wall, the "animals who loved her" because she always forgot to put the lid on the garbage can at the curb, and "he learned to speak" early but his first three words were curse words which he repeatedly loudly and often.

     That's as it should be. The same people who helped and supported you as you rose the ladder to success should be the ones who can jiggle that same ladder a bit if you climb so high that you forget how you got on that first step. Because they will also be the same people who will pick you up if you come crashing down to earth. And because they love the real you, the you nobody else gets to see--every last poop-covered, math-flunking, cousin-dating bit of you. :)