Something that hit me in 2024: "When I grow up" was already here

Atlanta, GA
December 31, 2024

When I was a kid, there were a few stories that were often repeated about things that would happen when I grew up.

One of them, repeated frequently by my father, was that when I grew up, I was going to realize what a "treasury" of records he had. He said this whenever my sister or I ridiculed his large collection of what we called “bell bottom music” – a floor-to-ceiling built-in shelf in the basement that is positively bulging with the greatest hits of rock and pop from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, as well as some classical, jazz, show tunes, and a smattering of gospel and country. Besides the scads of albums are shoeboxes and shoeboxes of 45s. Ok, fine, it’s a treasury of records.

Whenever he made this forecast, I pictured myself grown and at my parents house on a visit from some faraway big city. In the vision, my hair is naturally curly, as I’d always dreamed it would one day be, and I’m wearing a navy blue, knee-length gabardine skirt and matching blazer, white silk blouse, panty hose and heels. I’m an 80s working woman! I kneel down to take a closer look at a stack of albums on the floor, leaning against the shelf. As I thumb through the albums, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Abba, I say, “Dad, what a treasury you have here!”

The other tale about me as a grown up was that my mother would return to me the complete set of pristine Smurf drinking glasses that she had bought for me at Hardee’s in the mid 80s and tucked away for safekeeping. I’d get to have them when I had a home of my own and surlely they'd be a highly valuable collector's item by then. My mother had made an investment in my future by hiding away these Smurf glasses for me. Again, I imagined the 80s working woman in a slick condo in the city with the set of prized Smurf glasses displayed behind a glass cabinet door in the kitchen.

There was a story that I told myself, too. I was already grown by this point. When I was in my early 20s and living in New York City, there was a certain home aesthetic often seen in the city that I was just enamored with. An aesthetic I usually encountered when I found myself in the home of an adult who was a bit older than me, like a professor or co-worker, it was the apartment that had become a veritable museum of world travel.

In these apartments, I’d try to look cool as I surveyed framed photos of tours of Europe, shelves spilling over with objects and artifacts from Asia and Africa, walls adorned with woven tapestries from all over the Americas. I didn’t even have a passport back then.

When I grew up, I told myself, I wanted a home that looked like that. Really, what I wanted was the experiences that it took to make a home look like that.

A few years ago, my sister and her kids and I were at my parents’ house for lunch. After the meal, we all ended up in the basement, listening to my dad’s records. This isn’t something we typically do. I can’t think of a time that we had ever done this, and I can’t remember what drew us all down there on this day. I didn’t spell it out in so many words, but through the act alone, I was telling my dad that he was right and that the day had come when I acknowledged just what a treasury he had.

It was a strange feeling to sit in a very specific moment that I had very specifically envisioned many, many times as a child. I laughed a little bit to myself thinking about how I had imagined that one day my hair would just magically be curly and that I would be the type of woman who wore business suits. My hair was as straight as ever and I wore a black nylon jumper with fuschia running shoes. Even as a kid, my hair could never hold a curl and I was never on the road to wearing a suit. I’d never even gotten near the on ramp.

Still, enough of this moment mirrored that childhood vision that I was able to recognize it. This was it. This was when I grow up.

Earlier this year, a friend came to visit from out of town. I had met her during a month-long stint in Vietnam in 2023, and though she’s 20 years younger than me, we connected. In part because I’m from Atlanta and she had gone to Georgia Tech. But mostly because of a shared love of world travel. I knew she was “my people” right away. She came to see me in Atlanta shortly after I got back from a trip to South Africa and Kenya.

After she put her stuff down, she started looking around while I stood by. Her eyes moved from a watercolor of Lisbon; to a shelf filled with travel guides, foreign language books, a Hopi Indian kachina doll, and a Mexican Day of the Dead diorama and several decorative skulls; to a painting of a Buddhist monk in Thailand hanging over the couch next to a photo I had taken of a Moroccan man dressed in a traditional hooded robe.

My friend, who has easily seen three times as much of this world as I have, said, “I love your place. I love all the stuff from your travels.”

It had been a very long time since I’d thought about those New York City apartments that I used to love so much – the living scrapbooks of a life of travel, shrines to exploration – when I realized that I now lived in one.

“When I was in my 20s,” I told her, “I used to fantasize about living in an apartment filled with travel memorabilia.”

I’m not sure exactly when my apartment crossed over from a couple of travel tchotchkes on a shelf to becoming a shrine, but whenever that was, I hadn’t even noticed or stopped to appreciate meeting the milestone. It was kind of exhilarating to realize it now.

This was it. This was when I grow up. My life had turned out a lot like my fantasies had once looked.

A few weeks ago, when my dad asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I gave him the titles of two travel guides I wanted for an upcoming trip to Sri Lanka and Nepal. On Christmas Day, he gave me three wrapped packages. Two were obviously the books I’d requested.

The third was a larger box. I had no idea what it could be. It clinked when I placed it on my lap. I opened it carefully as it seemed breakable. Inside a cardboard box emblazoned with the logo of the coffee my parents drink at home was a pristine collection of never-used Smurf drinking glasses. They were 40 years old.

They’re now in the liquor cabinet in my dining room. The cabinet sits across from a wall hanging – a burlap sack emblazoned with the logo of the coffee I drank when I lived in Brazil.