I think I am finally
growing up.
Most of my contemporaries grew up years ago. Different things produced the change. A few were born that way, adults trapped in the bodies of middle school students, enduring the vaguaries of childhood like a prisoner serving time. Some became adults through their careers, growing up because their company demanded that they act with maturity. Most however became adults when they became parents. The responsibility of the raising of a child and the immaturity of youth were not two burdens that could be carried at the same time, so they dropped their childhood and embraced being an adult for the love of their child.
I, on the other hand, have never really grown up. I have never been a naturally mature person, my job requires responsibility, but not great amounts of maturity and my wife and I cannot have children, so I have not taken the standard roads to maturity. We are the couple that is hard to pin down, age-wise. We are not dated by the age of our kids. We are still do stupid things like staying out until 4 AM to see the Return of the King on opening night. So like we are the perfect example of the saying, you are somebody's child until you are somebody's parent.
But lately, something has changed. My wife and I recently purchased our first home. It is huge by comparison to our townhouse. It is requiring me to do adult things, like having a mortgage and putting up shelves. It has required me to use my tool box more often in the last three weeks than I have in the last five years. I have found myself trolling the Home Depot and Lowe's on Friday night and Saturday morning and actually finding things I need. It is beginning to make me grow up.
I have yet to figure out how I feel about this. With my fortieth birth day two months away, I realize that it is well past time for me to get my feet planted and begin to grow up, so part of me welcomes the change. This is the part that realizes that I am probably beginning to look a little silly, acting like a high schooler with my balding head and beard shot through with white. It is the part that is beginning to relax after years of feeling like it was putting on a show - a sixteen year old pretending to be an adult and praying no one would find out. It is the part that is ready to put away childish things.
But another part of me is scared of the change. It requires me to reinvent who I am, to be something I have never been. It goes against my laid back (i.e. lazy) nature and makes me do things I have never done before. I am used to the same old thing and like the familiarity of if, but now realize that like a favorite old sweatshirt I used to have, I am too big for it and it is too worn to be of good use. But it is still hard to put it aside.
So I am growing up. I'll let you know how it turns out.