Realizing You Are Grown Up

I was reading a magazine article the other day about growing up (I promise I will grow up some day, so hold off on your related sarcastic thoughts!). The crux's of the article was in the question that many respondents asked as to when they felt grew up.
What a hard question to answer. I know you are not going to give me your response, but I ask it of you. "At what time did you suddenly realize you were grown up?" The answers people gave to that question in the article all sounded great, some funny, some practical ones "like when you pay your bills on time", some related to a life changing event like a parent's death or the birth of a son or daughter, some according to old adages like "You are grown up when you accept responsibility for your actions', some according to the age of the respondent. I think the variation is because we really are not sure if we ever grow up or just what it means.
Like most people I want to grow up, but not if it means giving away freedom and the right to make mistakes. Sometimes our biggest mistakes are paths on the road to growing up. One of my biggest mistakes years ago was marrying someone because she wanted to marry, even though I knew it was a disaster waiting to happen. Yet, out of that bad marriage came the most wonderful event of my life- the birth of the perfect daughter, my Jane. So not being grown up enough to know better wasn't so bad that time. That's not to say that growing up is unwise.
I tried to think of the moment when I "grew up" but can't. Either I am not grown up or growing up for me is a sum total of experiences, not a single moment. I can name many events that made me step back and say to myself " I am alone on this and must choose wisely". But the single moment when I felt grown up....no "old" is when i realized I had become my mother's parent. Yep, when my mother was widowed by my father's death the parental child role seem to reverse, as I had heard often happens. I became counselor for my mom, she told me her worries fears and problems and I commiserated with her as a parent does to a child. In fact, I vividly remember sitting in my mom's home one day chatting with her and realizing at that instant that my "youth" was gone. I was no longer the child and she the adult. In fact, the roles were reversing. When my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and dying before my eyes I felt uncomfortable in the grown up role. Even though I was a parent to Jane, this was a different responsibility, an almost un natural one. No parent should be forced to become the child to her son, nor should the son assume a parental role to her.
Three years after my mother's death I was given the role again to my older brother as he slowly died from cancer as well. It made me think I am forever trapped in the grown up role, that I lost something innocent when I took it on and that there is no going back...unless I one day become the child to Jane in a similar fashion. Nothing could be worse.