I parked in front of Stratford’s Allington & Van Ryzen Red Owl store and sat for a moment before getting out of the car. The damp, overcast sky made the day feel like it was much later in fall, and not just a chilly end of August afternoon. Clutching my purse, I slowly walked up the steps to enter the small-town general store. My mission that afternoon was to shop for and buy a pair of khaki pants.

At seventeen years of age, the only preparation for adulthood that I had made was to learn how to drive a car and get my license. Many of the activities that most teenagers experience were not checked off in my life. I had never cooked a meal, thought about what I wanted to do after graduating from high school, entered a store by myself to buy clothing, experimented with makeup, or gone on a date. I was far behind the social development of other kids my age.

Perhaps the reason I was so far behind had to do with my being the youngest of a large family, living in the country on a farm, being an introverted person. I felt afraid of adulthood and thought it was too far a stretch for me. 

Pausing for a moment after entering the store, I glanced around appreciatively. To my right was the grocery side of the store. Although it was small with about four short aisles, there was a refrigerated counter along the back wall with a butcher there, cutting and packaging meat. The check-out register was next to the entrance. I smiled, remembering the times I visited the store with Mom and my sister’s boyfriend was working at the cash register. He liked to joke and tease people, and it felt like he was a big brother even before he really was.

In front of me and to my left was the much larger dry goods part of the store. Daddy had told me the building was once used as an opera house, and that was why there was a stage on the farthest back side of the sales floor. That was where we bought shoes. It always thrilled me to climb the steps to the stage, sit in a chair to have my feet measured and then try on shoes the salesclerk selected from the surrounding stacks of boxes.

Near the stage was a counter where material Mom bought was unrolled from the bolt, measured, and cut. For people who didn’t sew their clothing, there were racks of ready-made slacks, shirts and dresses nearby. I made a beeline toward the pants and began to riffle through the collection. I felt stressed and shaky. There was so much to consider: the different styles, colors, and sizes. Then, I worried if my body would fit the size. Embarrassed because I felt so awkward, I requested to use the fitting room.

Several minutes later, I returned to my car feeling exhilarated. The pants had fit, and even looked nice. I paid for the pants and carried the bag it was in out of the store like an adult who had gone shopping alone hundreds of times before.

Although I found it daunting to take my first steps to becoming a fully functioning adult, the speed with which I dove into the rest of my adult life was mind boggling. In the following twelve months, I started to date during my senior year of high school, planned to attend college, started to work as a nursing assistant at a hospital, changed my mind about college, met a man I fell in love with and accepted his proposal of marriage.

I thought I had adulthood all figured out by the time I was in my fifties. I had raised children and had an empty nest. Then I became a widow. That threw me into a version of adulthood that was on overdrive and steroids. Suddenly I found myself having to take care of a furnace when it didn’t work, replace the roof when I noticed the shingles were buckling, buy a new car after a deer accident, and change insurance companies. These were all the adult things my late husband had taken care of.

One day I noticed the tire treads on the car were getting shallow. I knew that meant I had to buy new tires soon. Feeling out of my depth, I went to a garage, picked out tires and had the work done right then and there.

As I waited, I thought about when I was seventeen years old and shopping by myself for the first time at Allington & Van Ryzen’s store, and concluded, “I’ve come a long way, but there seems to be no end to adulty things for me to do!”