Pop

There's something I believe deserves acknowledgment. This past Tuesday marked a year since my grandfather, Pop, had quadruple bypass surgery following a heart attack he suffered while caring for Nana. This is a man who, until about this time last year, spent each and every day of the past few years caring for my dying grandmother. As she drifted away, he did all in his power to keep her near, to maintain her lifestyle and her dignity. He refused to put her in a nursing home. When it was suggested that he purchase a hospital bed for his own ease in caring for her, he refused; he wasn't about to stop sleeping next to his wife after sixty years lying side-by-side.

As I write this, I have the end of She's Having a Baby playing in the background. (Seriously, you need to see this movie.) This shouldn't give anything away...I've just come to the part where "This Woman's Work" plays over a montage of the couple's early married years. It makes my heart ache. This is how I imagine my grandparents, except in the 1950s (and I actually think it's pretty close to the first years of my own parents' marriage). I love it.

Anyway, early one morning, Pope woke up to turn Nana, as he did several times each night. He was short of breath, but he got back in bed and went to sleep. We're talking about an eighty-four-year-old man doing all of the labor involved in caring for an adult who could walk...who could not even adjust herself while seated. It was hard, hard work.

But he kept with it. He's loyal. He loved her...he still loves her. And, oh, how he misses her. I think he always thought he'd go first, but he didn't. He's here with us and a new lifestyle is taking shape. This is how I would sum up the past year in a few words:

Fear.

Grief.

Joy.

Love.

Life. So much life.

Wendy Darling

I don't really want to grow up.

It wasn't until this morning that I came upon what might be the reason for my lifelong love of Peter Pan. I'm not sure exactly what had me thinking about it. I watched She's Having a Baby last night as I fell asleep...maybe that's what did it. (If you've never seen that movie, I urge you to check it out. The further into my twenties I get, the more relevant it becomes.)

Maybe it's that I've been sick the past few days. I can recall being a little kid, sick in the middle of the night, sitting in my mom's lap in the den watching Disney's original animated Peter Pan...on VHS. Memories such as these make me feel warm and fuzzy.

I'd say "maybe" again, but this is what it probably is. I believe that I've entered what some might call a quarter-life crisis (thank you, John Mayer). It seems I am always thinking about the fact that I am on the verge of a stage of life that is just plain weird. I'm getting ready to graduate from college and it's overwhelming.

This is what I'm anticipating. In an attempt to create my adult, post-college self, I'm going to lose half of the identity I solidified during said college years; I shall bid farewell to all of the structure I've had for 85% of my life; and, oh yeah, an enormous slice of my childhood will be snatched away. Hello, Responsibility, I want my life back.

Let's be honest, most of us aren't really adults in college. We have our mature (responsible) moments, sure, but for many of us, it's still so safe. Maybe I'm wrong, but for me, it's been safe...so safe.

And really good, too. So good.

But it isn't really adulthood.

And that's what's so scary about it all; that's what makes me want to retreat.

So, back to where we began. My knowledge of the tale of Peter Pan is limited by the fact that I've never actually read the book, but here is what I gather from the numerous screen versions I've seen...

Peter Pan was stuck. He's a middle-aged man living in his parents' basement. He's clinging so desperately to his childhood that it's become embarrassing to admit that perhaps growing up wouldn't be so bad after all. And he's missed out, boy, has he missed out.

Yes, Wendy and the Darling boys return home because they miss mom and dad, but they make a compromise in doing so. They have to grow up. The boys are carefree...they have time, but Wendy knows what she faces in returning home. She has to move out of the nursery. She has to become a woman and do womanly things. She can't be a kid anymore...but then I wonder if she really wants to be. My guess is, she doesn't want to get stuck like the boy who won't grow up.

So she grows up, maybe reluctantly, but she does. She has a life...a fictional one, but you get the idea. She makes the most of what she can't actually control. Yes, she waits for Peter's eventual return, but did she really want him to come back? Think about it. Would you?

It might be exciting to revisit to the land of perpetual juvenescence, but, like Wendy, I don't know that I'd go. I'd feel obligated to, of course, that's just part of my personality; I'd hate to let him down. Honestly, though, why go back when you've found something so much better and fuller and richer? Pete's enchanting, sure, but the guy's got no life. He's been so afraid of failing, that he fails; and so afraid of losing, that he's lost.

So, like my fifth Halloween, I'm going to be Wendy Darling.

It's just better this way.