Vox Meditantis

Saturday, 11th October 2025

The question always catches people off guard, I’ve noticed. In my practice, when someone asks it – and they do, more often than one might think – there’s usually a long pause before the answer comes.

For me, it wasn’t a single moment of revelation, but rather a quiet recognition that crept upon me in increments, like the tide advancing on the Delaware shore. If pressed to name a time, though, I suppose it was the spring of 1988, during my final year of undergraduate study at the University of Delaware.

My father had suffered a minor stroke – nothing catastrophic, but enough to frighten us all. Mother rang me at university, her voice carrying that particular brightness she’d always wielded against worry, a legacy from her Nevada days when a smile could disarm a difficult patron. But beneath the playful cadence, I heard something else: a tremor of fear she couldn’t quite mask.

I drove home that evening, the familiar route from Newark to New Corinth unspooling in the dark whilst my mind turned over questions of mortality and responsibility. When I arrived at the hospital, Michael was already coordinating with the physicians, his engineer’s mind parsing medical terminology into actionable information. Susan hovered near Mother, offering comfort in the way she’d always done – gentle touches, whispered reassurances. And I found myself doing something different altogether: I watched.

I watched my father’s face as he slept, the lines around his eyes deeper than I’d remembered, and I thought of all those years he’d driven his bus routes through Washington, then supervised the municipal transport in New Corinth – steady, reliable, present. I watched my mother attempt to maintain her vivacity even as her hands betrayed her anxiety, fidgeting with her wedding ring. And I watched my siblings fall into their familiar patterns: Michael solving, Susan soothing.

What struck me then – what still strikes me when I recall that night – was the realisation that I couldn’t simply be the youngest anymore, the introspective one observing from the margins whilst the others managed the practical necessities. I understood, with a clarity that felt almost physical, that being grown meant carrying not just one’s own burdens, but holding space for others to set theirs down.

I sat with my father through that night, not because anyone asked me to, but because I chose it. We didn’t speak much when he woke – he never was one for excessive conversation – but in the quiet hours before dawn, I found myself telling him about my decision to pursue psychiatry, a choice I’d been contemplating but hadn’t yet voiced aloud. He listened in that particular way he had, patient and curious, and when I finished, he simply nodded and said, ‘You’ll be good at that. You notice things.’

Perhaps that’s what becoming a grown-up truly meant: not the grand gestures or dramatic pronouncements, but the quiet recognition that one had moved from being shaped by the world to taking some small responsibility for shaping it in return. That night, I stopped waiting for my parents to provide all the answers and began trusting that I might, occasionally, hold a few myself.

Father recovered well, of course – lived another twenty-one years, characteristically stoic about the entire affair. But something shifted in me that spring evening, a subtle recalibration of identity that felt both terrifying and oddly liberating. I’d like to say I’ve felt entirely grown-up since then, but truthfully, there are still moments – many of them – when I feel as uncertain as I did at seventeen. The difference, I suppose, is that now I understand uncertainty is not the opposite of adulthood; it’s simply one of its more honest companions.

Catherine

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved. | 🌐 Translate