I had lunch with three of my best friends last week. Since we’re approaching our mid-forties, we’ve been talking about milestones.

I said, "I think you know you’re a grown up when you stop opening things with your teeth." They laughed, but I was serious. I distinctly remember the first time I looked at a bag of shredded coleslaw cabbage and looked for scissors instead of letting my teeth tear into it. Why didn’t I trust my teeth’s ability to rip through plastic? When did that happen? I also remember the first time I said to my children – in the lament of mothers everywhere – "All right! Who took my good scissors?" When did I acquire enough scissors that I had a good pair to distinguish from those less good? (And what age do you start making coleslaw anyway?)

Even though I was serious about the scissors thing, it was still a placehold for what I really know to be true about growing up. Something that should be whispered. You know you’re all grown up when you realize you are ordinary. The time when you might have been gifted, a prodigy, a rare talent, the "youngest ___ to ever ___" has passed. You grow up even further when you entertain the idea that your children (if you are lucky) might be ordinary too.

Someone will always bring up Grandma Moses or another example of late-in-life genius. (If I start painting in my seventies, I will declare myself a genius, continually sniffing mineral spirits to maintain my delusion.) Those tales of extraordinary old folks are heartwarming, but most of us reach maturity at the intersection where potential meets ordinary. I have been many people in my forty-three years, and all of them have been a disappointment to me in one way or the other. A failed academic. A musician without the mathematical ability to shiver bones and move marrow. A singer without a bit of grit or blue. A house painter afraid of ladders. A vacation planner who cannot travel. A mother of independent children, spinning off since they day they were born. A daydreamer who dreams of...sleep.

Once, as I dropped my daughter off at school, I passed a woman driving a carload of teenagers. The car was ancient, but not yet vintage, and all the windows were rolled down, so I theorized the air conditioner was broken and probably had been for a long time. The car was old enough and teens had hair long enough and the woman had hair big enough that it could have been the seventies again. Her car a Cutlass Supreme time machine. The woman looked harried and pissed, as if she’d climbed into the time machine expecting shortly to be at Camelot riding a unicorn, and instead wound up in a rundown car filled with steamy, greasy kids. It could just as easily happen that way. It happened to me.

Last week, I wandered into a fabric store. My mother made most of my clothes when I was little. I’d pick out the pattern, the fabrics and the trim. I’d draw a picture of what I wanted the dress to look like, draw myself how I wanted to look in the dress. My mother would take the drawing and make the dress to my specifications, make me look like my picture. When my daughter was young, I did the same for her. There is something intoxicating and evocative about bolts of fabric – party dress silks, soft baby bunting, old-fashioned mattress ticking, beachy linen, and sofa-pillow velveteen. I couldn’t talk myself into a sewing project, but I did need a new pair of scissors, and I treated myself to a nice, heavy pair. A good pair.

At home, I showed them to my daughter. Declaring them "the good scissors." Not to be used for opening packages or school projects. To be returned to my top desk drawer if borrowed. Then I ran into a dilemma. The scissors were encased in hard plastic. I needed a pair of scissors to free my new scissors. As I rummaged through drawers, cursing the minor hell my life had become, my daughter grabbed the packaged scissors and tore the plastic with her teeth. I watched in amazement. Those teeth! I said, "Damn, Girl. You’re gifted!" (And she is.)