Mid-Life Crisis
When I call it that it doesn't seem so weird.
By Juyun
I wake up these mornings to the gentle but annoyingly ominous chime of my husband’s alarm clock.
Smacking him, is how I turn it off.
“Five more minutes,” I say, rolling over onto my side and stealing his now available pillow as he leaves.
First, there’s the sound of the shower turning on, which lulls me back to sleep for another 10 minutes, before the sound of hubby scraping the shower glass with our squeegee, wakes me up for good.
Eyes half closed I gather clothes for the girls which I unceremoniously drop onto their beds.
“Chop chop my little Pop Pops!”
Shutters are cracked open, noise machine turned off, and I hand them each toothbrushes.
“I’m timing you!”
It’s the first, and only threat I need to give them. They’re both great kids.
“Bye Bunny,” my husband kisses me before loading the girls into the car for drop-off.
I never have to ask him to do drop offs.
And then I’m alone again. Writing emails, reading articles, thinking about strange things obsessively that rarely have an immediate bearing on my life. And then it all happens again.
Recently I re-discovered an old love.
No - not a dude, writing.
Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, poor Prufrock, Jake Barnes, Nick Caraway, Nicole Diver, Elizabeth Bennett.
Like old friends, in the space between waking and sleep, I wonder why they did the things they did, chose the lives they chose, and of course, how could they have such huge blind spots (as if I don’t).
So now I’ve taken to the page to write why my daughters do the things they do, why I felt the way I felt as a teenager, the extreme burden and beauty of life rolled into the mundane (as in my current WIP) and the incredible (querying fantasy).
As far as mid-life crises go, I’d say my husband should be pretty pleased.
Fingers crossed that his is just as mild and productive.