15

I talked to a friend on the phone the other day for the first time in over a decade. Her husband dialed her up, half way around the world, and hit the speakerphone button, and all of sudden, her voice filled the car - so essentially her - that I could not believe that a single thing has changed. That's not true, though. Everything has changed since we were 15. Well, almost everything. State of Love & Trust is still my favorite Pearl Jam song. I still don't like walnuts in chocolate chip cookies. Even now I'll fall for a boy wearing Adidas Sambas at the drop of a hat.

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We do a pretty good job of being adults. We file our taxes, buy nutritious food, take care of our babies, get good reviews at work. We get to our doctors' appointments on time, meet our hard deadlines, and take bottles of good wine to dinner parties. We brush & floss and mostly pick up after ourselves. We plan and pay for vacations, packing our own suitcases and carrying them through the lobbies of hotels where we have rooms waiting for us in our own names. We get from here to there without help. We take responsibility for our own actions and don't shy away from hard conversations.

On Monday night I got home from work and found my sweet roommate's sweet parents sitting in the living room. All my tiredness, stress, sadness, anxiety, exhaustion was lessened somehow by simply having real adults -- even someone else's good & wise parents -- under our roof, carrying some of the weight, showing us how its done.