{"id":31,"date":"2015-03-23T04:08:04","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T04:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kathrynberlabooks.wordpress.com\/?p=31"},"modified":"2015-03-23T04:08:04","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T04:08:04","slug":"bob-is-good-originally-published-6202012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynberlabooks.com\/index.php\/2015\/03\/23\/bob-is-good-originally-published-6202012\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob is Good (originally published June 20, 2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BB\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\nWhat do you want to be when you grow up<\/em> was a question I heard frequently when I was young. I\u2019m grateful that the question was asked of me. It presumed I had the ability to determine my own fate\u2014a presumption I didn\u2019t always believe myself. And at various times in my life I had various answers because one was expected to have an answer to that question.<\/p>\n

And my answers evolved from princess to reporter to doctor to dancer to singer to famous author and so on. The facts of my life told a different story\u2014from newspaper delivery girl to theater projectionist to baker to banker to wife-and-mother to businesswoman doing double duty as wife-and-mother.<\/p>\n

But the question still hung in the air along with a different one\u2014when did I become a grown up?<\/em><\/p>\n

Was it when I graduated from high school? From college? When I got married? When I had children? When my children moved out of the house? Will I be grown up when my children have children? Or will it be when my hair is white and my bones as porous as a house sparrow\u2019s?<\/p>\n

The problem is that I don\u2019t feel grown up. There wasn\u2019t a moment in my life when I transitioned from child to adult. I still carry all the odds and ends of childhood within me even as the wrinkles on my face grow deeper. There\u2019s a corner of my brain where my teenage angst still resides. The infatuation I felt towards my husband on our first date still thrives within my heart after more than thirty years. And the young mother who couldn\u2019t figure out how to put her newborn baby in a car seat still grapples with any difficulty born by her now adult children.<\/p>\n

I know a guy whose name is Bob. He\u2019s been on this planet for around ninety years but when I looked into his eyes I got the feeling that he\u2019s still probably growing up himself. \u00a0He might be the guy you call in the middle of the night if you\u2019re alone and scared and need someone to talk you back to normalcy. Or he might be the guy you call if you need someone to take you to the doctor, or the airport. Particularly if you\u2019re old and don\u2019t see so well anymore. Because he\u2019s not old\u2014he\u2019s still growing up.<\/p>\n

You could probably count on him to make a hundred mile trip once a week to deliver Meals on Wheels to locations so remote there aren\u2019t even any real roads to drive on. Or maybe if you live in hurricane country and can\u2019t drive yourself, he\u2019d be the guy to stay behind and make sure you got to high country where the tidal surge wouldn\u2019t be a threat. If you live in Cuba without access to the basic amenities we all take for granted, he\u2019d certainly be the guy looking for a way to get them to you. And just like the kid that he is, you can probably find him riding a bike\u2014or maybe playing with his new iPhone, or model trains and airplanes. I\u2019m not sure if he\u2019s grown up yet, but I suspect he\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

So the next time someone asks me what I want to be when I grow up\u2026 well I might just say that I want to be Bob.<\/p>\n

***\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do you want to be when you grow up was a question I heard frequently when I was young. I\u2019m grateful that the question was asked of me. It presumed I had the ability to determine my own fate\u2014a presumption I didn\u2019t always believe myself. And at various times in my life I had…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynberlabooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynberlabooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynberlabooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynberlabooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynberlabooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynberlabooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynberlabooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynberlabooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynberlabooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}