Grown-ups.

What a foreign species Grownups have been. Mailing their money away, owning fun stuff like cars and pools but never smiling gleefully over them, sometimes with little versions of themselves orbiting their legs or torsos.

I realize now that I've always had the presumption that Grownups would be another race entirely all my life. It was unquestionable that I would become like my mother, and stop wearing rollerskates in the house.

And yet, I'm increasingly mailing my money away, and when I drive it's never with the lawless abandon that I once dreamed of. My own sister, my template for living well, has what can only be called a 'family home'. For her family. There's a mortgage, and a lawn mower, and a dog, and a son, and a 'baby on the way'. All empirical evidence indicates that she is now a Grownup. What is this alchemy!

I think when she and Brent first announced the pregnancy I said something haphazardly like 'that's not supposed to happen'. I suppose it was an offbeat way to express my surprise. But at the moment my mind was being blown away that my enigmatic sister was now an enigmatic adult, and less like me than ever.

So maybe growing up is inevitable. But the implications of that have never been better expressed than by the great Randall Munroe: