What makes you feel like a real grown up?

[RealHousewivesOfTaunton]

I made a slow-cooked beef stew today. Slow-cooking anything is a feat of organisation and planning that makes me feel like the sort of "real" grown-up normally only found in paperback novels. I then ruined it by pretending I was a medieval publican serving stew to the travellers at my tavern, but I had a moment of feeling like an actual adult.

Going to parents evening is another one, especially when the teachers are younger than me.

What makes you feel like a proper grown-up?

Tax returns
Menopause
Caring for my elderly parents

I have a horrible theory that you only truly, finally feel like a grown up when your parents die. Despite being mother to an almost adult, I think that experience will be the sobering one.

When I'm at work and someone calls me Dr Hexen and I look behind because I think my Mum or Dad have walked into the room.

Getting the piano tuned.

Like you, slow cooking in a cast iron pot.

Arranging for friends to visit, and accommodating their kids and dogs.

Mulching.

Having an investment account and a Euro bank account.

Interesting - I only felt like an adult since January, when I had to put my mother into a nursing home. I'd been her carer for seven years, but that didn't do it. Neither did learning to drive a few years ago.

@Catsmere I think it’s something about no longer having someone older to turn to or know better. God knows my parents have been patchy at best on some of that stuff but they are still there. When they go, it’ll be just me.
I read a quote somewhere, can’t remember who it was (Maya Angelou?), something about your parents being gone and you’re « standing in the gap » between death in one direction and the younger generation in the other.
Sorry, not very cheerful, but my parents are very elderly now and it’s on my mind!

Yes - it's funny how it feels different when they are (through death or disability) physically gone. I wasn't able to turn to Mum for anything for years, because she has vascular dementia after a stroke, and her memory is shot, so she couldn't really contribute any advice about anything. But now she's in a nursing home, it's different. Perhaps it's less "feeling like an adult" than having the care burden lifted. Now the only daily care burden I have is my cats!