There have been plenty of things my kids have done that have upset me. Messes they’ve made, things they’ve broken, money they’ve cost…but there’s one thing that upsets me more than I can even put into words:
They’ve turned me into a person who wakes up early on the weekend without an alarm clock.
I was always a night person. I still am. Half the time I write this column long after everyone else in the house has gone to bed, and only finish up after 2. Then I lay down, doze for what feels like 4 seconds, and wake up in time to watch the first light of dawn pool in the hollows beneath my eyes, because I can’t NOT wake up with the sunrise anymore.
It’s not that I’m even getting up to do anything. I don’t spring out of bed and start my day on a high note. I’ll stagger to the kitchen for a coffee or an energy drink, sip it bleary-eyed while leaning on the kitchen counter, and ignore my children (who are already wide awake and yelling for my attention) as my cells fight to be first in line for every micro-gram of caffeine coming into my body.
I will not start my day with a morning workout, I will not prepare a healthy breakfast, and I absolutely, positively will not seize the day. Carpe DENIED.
…and yet, for all my laying in bed willing myself towards another hour of sleep, I just can’t seal the deal, and there’s more to it than just the fact that my kids start shouting while the moon is still up. It’s because I’m not Matt anymore; I’m Dad now, and dads my age get up early whether the kids wake them up or not.
I’m becoming a middle-aged male stereotype, and don’t know how to feel about it. I mean, I REALLY hit all the bases: I wake up early, wear cargo shorts all the time, love to grill, and bore my kids with advice on the importance of maintenance. I tell dumb jokes, worry about my hairline, grumble about the thermostat, and even smoke a pipe like some sweater-vest clad dad from a 50s sitcom.
I didn’t want any of these things, they just sort of happened. You own a home for a long time, so eventually you begin to care about how it’s maintained. Your kids want you to spend time outside with them, so you spend more time outdoors grilling and mowing the lawn, and put on cargo shorts to store all the acorns and weird rocks they want you to hold. It’s not a change you intentionally set out to make; you build this new version of yourself slowly, one sensible New Balance sneaker at a time.
So looking at all those changes in myself, there’s a question that really worries me:
Is there a second puberty you hit around 40 that no one tells you about beforehand?
I know that sounds like a joke, but it’s the closest comparison I can draw. I’ve changed in both my mind and body; I’m not the guy I was in my 20s and 30s anymore. It’s everything about the first puberty, but reversed: instead of raging hormones turning your emotions up to 11, you finally start to chill and not take things so seriously. Your drives for money and sex relax and shift towards family. That “Hair in new places” thing happens again, except now it’s more “Hair starts disappearing from places you’d prefer it stayed put.”
I have new priorities, and my old priorities are starting to seem kind of hollow. It feels like looking at your old toys about the time you turned 13: you still remember why you liked them originally, but just don’t feel it anymore.
Just one example: I don’t need to be the first to know about trendy new pop culture anymore, and I don’t feel like not knowing about it first is shameful. That ate up so much of my energy as a young man. I felt so cool every time I knew about some indie band or Sundance movie before my friends, and like a complete loser every time I came late to that party. Now I have no idea why I cared. All I have to show for all that spent energy is a box of scratched CDs I never enjoyed that much in the first place and an old Maximo Park T-shirt that aged as well as leftover guacamole.
Ever since I passed 35, it feels like I’m shedding those sorts of impulses, and growing up all over again. I wasn’t expecting to go through a second puberty, but it’s becoming abundantly clear that’s happening, whether I want it or not.
…I guess if I’m gonna do this, I might as well do it right: time to put on some Dashboard Confessional and get out my mopey poetry journal. If any of you need me, I’ll be in my room.
Inessential Reading 