for real this time

According to some, I officially became an adult in June 1993 by reciting Torah in front of a bunch of my friends and family. Others might say it happened the day I left for college, or perhaps the day just before the beginning of senior year when I signed the lease on my first apartment and wrote my first rent check.

I don't know if any of those milestones really made me an adult. I'm not sure I know what being "an adult" really means, since I've often seen so-called adults acting pretty childish or childlike (with negative and positive connotations, respectively). In fact, I'm increasingly less sure that this whole adulthood thing is really all its cracked up to be.

Regardless, I think maybe my real passage to adulthood happened during the past few days. My first serious boyfriend got married. Two of my dearest friends in the world announced that they are (well, technically she is) pregnant with their first child. And, for the first time in my (very lucky) life, I am dealing with the very sudden and shocking death of a friend.

It's funny how things hit you sometimes in a particular way, at a certain time, and take up nearly the whole world. Other friends and people I've dated have gotten married. It's not like he left me for her; in fact he got together with his now-wife a few months after I had a fairly immature romantic crisis and ended our relationship (um, you're welcome?). Other friends, including some very close friends, already have or are about to have (yay for the Lady of the Lakes and Cool Cat!) babies. And people I love - people to whom I was, frankly, much closer than I was to the friend I just lost - have died.

So why is this so hard?

Is it because I feel very far away from the joy and very close to the sadness?

I see wedding photos that someone posted on Facebook, full of many of my closest friends, and it hurts a little that I wasn't there to help celebrate. I know that sounds nuts, but I'm actually on good terms with just about everyone I've ever dated, and I was friends with Boyfriend Numero Uno long before we were in a relationship. I miss him like I miss other people who were a very major and positive part of my life at one time or another, and I still care about him. All that I-use-to-love-you-but-now-you're-pond-scum stuff has never made sense to me, unless the other person cheated on you or kicked your dog. I'm so happy for him, and just wish I had a way to convey it without feeling slightly awkward.

I read and write emails to my close circle of friends about due dates and growing bellies, and know that nothing I could say in an email or in our rare phone calls will ever convey how much I love and am excited for these women with whom I have and will continue to grow into "adulthood," even as I wonder when or if I will (want to?) experience those supposed "joys" of pregnancy. I want to be there, darn it! Watching their bellies grow and hearing the daily updates and feeling the same infectious excitement that enveloped me when they got married, that made it actually fun to be around celebration-planning even though hunkering down over the minute details of a big formal white wedding has never really been on my to-do list.

But I'm not there. I'm here, remembering the moment last Friday night when I noticed out of the corner of my eye Mel Long walking out of the contra dance to head home. And I remember looking for her Saturday morning at her booth at the farmers market where she's been doing massage therapy for years, and seeing only a sign announcing that she'd be "back in 10 minutes" - a few minutes more than my friends and I were planning to stick around. And I think about this weekend and next, and all the dances and markets I will go to from now on where I won't see her huge smile or feel the squeeze of her hand as she said hello.

Mel was the only person who gave me a birthday present this year. She came to my potluck and quietly handed me a small white cardboard box, which I opened to find a perfect little bird's nest. She kept finding them in the woods around her house, she said, and loved them, but had collected too many and thought it was time to share.

Thank you, all who have shared your love with me. I will keep trying to not take it for granted.