Growing up vs Growing old

Coming home from the BBQ last night Ethan asked me in the car, his face painted like a golden cheetah, how much school he has to go to.  I said, like, all of it? He said yes.  I answered, from tomorrow until grade 12 and then University to find job he likes to do.  He asked me if he had to get a job and I said that he did, but that all his friends would have jobs too.  When we got home and I put them to bed Ethan had a requisite 'last question' of the night, which is usually asking when I am going to bed.  Instead he asked if he will get married.  I said fortunately, that was entirely up to him... you only do that if you want to.  Unlike being employed.  Then he told me he wanted to stop talking about that and move onto something else.

Nothing like my kid to twist the knife that is, to all parents, already painfully watching them grow up. THANKS KID.  Now I have to grow up too, just great!

"When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calender that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from the chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.

I spent my life learning to feel less.
Every day I felt less.
Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” 
― Jonathan Safran Foer