Things Grown-Ups Do

As a child there was a vast wonderland of mysterious things that only grown-ups could do.  Most of them turned out to be worth the wait (like drinking and sex), while others I never really thought about until I got here, like paying the mortgage. The ones that really stood out in my mind were the things that grown-ups had to do because no one else would.

My father was always doing these mandatory grown-up things, the ones that made being a grown up look a lot less fun than being a child. Things like fixing the sinks, working at not-the-dream-job to support the family, making the hard decisions about sick pets.

I particularly remember when he buried our pets. It couldn't have been helpful, hearing a chorus of four  little girls crying as he set out to his task.  I remember once watching from the window as he dug a hole in the far corner of the back yard. It was dusk and and hard to make out what he was doing, the mystery of it slowly covered in darkness.

Today I thought about this as I dug a hole for one of our chickens. Our Buff Orpington had been acting out of sorts for a while and this morning she died. As I dug, I wondered how many times I might do this again, how different it would be to explain it to kids, how burying a pet was always something I thought someone else did.

It's a funny rite of passage, burying a pet yourself. It's different than flushing a fish or giving an animal away. The consideration I needed to give to very physicality of it all --like where to bury the animal, the detail of how to keep other animals from digging it up, struggling with a stiff body while trying to put it neatly in the ground-- reminded me of the wonder of life, how changed, somehow less real, an animal is once it is dead. To some degree I laughed at the irony of burying this particular animal, when in most other circumstances I happily eat other members of its species. But mostly I realized how I'd always taken for granted that someone else would do this.

But now I am strangely grateful. Grateful to the vet who made it seem normal, grateful to my dad for the many, many times he did this same thing, and grateful for the realization that even though I am a grown-up, I still have a lot of growing up yet to do.

Comments

[Meredith Gould]

Sweet post.

[Alison-Mountain Momma]

It's "funny" the things that bring us back to childhood and make us realize that we still have so far to go.

I'm so sorry about your chicken.

[MoMO]

Love this post, girl.

[Amy]

What a lovely, heart-wrenching post. So sorry about the chicken/pet.

[Best Brother-in-Law Ever]

I had to bury my childhood dog when I was 19. Everybody was out of town, I came home for the weekend and lost Cinders to my own stupidity. Very difficult. It got worse when years later I found out I did not bury her deep enough and when it rained she "rose from the dead" and my parents had to re-bury her. So I hear you sister.

[Women Jordans]

Sometimes a rumour is like a snowball. It will become bigger and bigger, especially on the internet