A Child Of Twenty-Six

At some point over the weekend, I reached the conclusion of my twenty-sixth year on the planet.  I say 'at some point' because I don't know if I should consider US Eastern Standard Time or whatever the time zone in Japan is called.  I know that I was born around 7:15 at night on 8 September 1981 US EST, but that would have been 8:15 in the morning on 9 September here in Japan.  Or it could have been on 8 September at 12:01 AM here in Japan, although that would have been just after 11 on the morning of 7 September in the US.  Or it could have been...well, you get the point.

Still though, I'm 26 years old now.  Normally, I don't consider myself a person who frets about getting older.  One of my best friends is married to a woman five years his senior and one night while we were out for drinks, after she lodged a complaint about the big 3-0 being only two months away, he responded with one of the most insightful things I have ever heard a human being say: 'In two months, you'll be two months older.'  I've more or less subscribed to this philosphy ever since, even though that's only been about ten months.

And yet.

That same friend informed me last week, two days before my birthday, that he and his wife are expecting their first child in April.  He will be the second of my closest high school friends to bring a child into this world.  He currently is the third of seven to be married, have a full-time job with career prospects, and a mortgage.

My first thought after reading the email, other than the fact that the Democratic Party of North Carolina needs to start encouraging its supporters to procreate if they want the Democrats to even out the vote in eighteen years, was that he will be a great father.  And that, no matter how much I would like to pretend that I am still seventeen years old, I am getting older.  Not in the sense that my hair is getting grey since that's nothing new or that I stay sore a bit longer after a workout, but rather in the sense that people my age are already settling down and having kids and doing what...real...people seem to do. 

And here's me, lying on my futon, six inches off the floor, in my rented apartment in Hakodate, Japan.  In twelve hours I will be back at my job, a job with zero career potential, and talking to two women in a language they will probably never use outside of the classroom.  I don't own a car.  The most valuble thing I do own is my ever-expanding library.  One of my close friends already has a four-month-old son.  Now another one, from a different friend, is on the way.  As I write this, I realize that my girlfriend's father got married and did his part in her conception when he was twenty-six.  Damn.

I have no way of knowing if my friends look at my life and entertain thoughts about how I ended up here or whether, at least according to some defintion of success that incorporates salary and square feet, my life as it stands is a failure.  But I'm not sure that I really care; I'm perfectly happy with where I am.  My twenty-sixth year was a year of adventure filled with good companionship and love.  Right now, my twenty-seventh is looking to be a continuation of the same.  And I'll take it.

Comments

[~R.]

And take it you damn well should; I too know people who have done the 'grown up' thing who should be so lucky to have done the things you've done, and for the reasons you have. You crossed an ocean for love and adventure and because, well, you could. That works for me.

[Lee]

Well first off I would say that measuring your life by others standings is first not like you and second stupid. Keep touring the world and learning languages I think you have a few more child bearing years left in you.