Getting Old

My back hurts. It is clamped up like piano strings. My knees hurt. Squatting off the couch makes me concerned for my patellar tendons. I'm getting old. I feel old. I feel like a dad. And to tell you the truth, I kind of like it. Now, not the knee / back pain thing, but there is something in me that is feeling, I don't know, mature. I guess there a few reasons I could feel this way…

I waved a sad goodbye today to my old '97 Dodge truck, Rosie. She wasn't "just a truck"... Those are fightin' words... No, Rosie was a friend of mine. We were together for ten years. I sold her for $1200 dollars to a man from Valley, AL. Never thought of Rosie as a Valley girl, but oh well. Alot of my youth left as Rosie drove away, the older I get, more I have to let go. I’m not 20 years old anymore, a lesson I must relearn daily.

Perhaps it was the baby furniture I assembled for my daughter (who is still in Russia, God willing not much longer). Putting together the crib (not hard) and the dresser (intensely hard) was a labor of love for me. It scarcely felt like work when I considered the precious girl that will grow to love the home we are preparing for her. I would put together a thousand dressers for that precious little one.

It could just be the rain, but today was different. On the one hand the letting go, on the other is the promise of great gain in bringing Rebekah Grace Boman home… I need to grow up, so I can love her and help her do the same.

…I’ve never been a big fan of “adolescence” , the male species should be boys or men. There is a real danger in embracing adolescence as a stage of life. Perfectly good “would- be” men can get stuck here and with the enabling of mothering wives find themselves trapped perpetually playing video games, whining, and shirking various responsibilities…

In regards to a time when the transition from boy to man occures, I’m sure ages vary. For some it is when they turn twelve or fifteen or maybe when they watch the last remaining token of their youth drive away without them in it (like me).

So tomorrow is going to be a new experience for me, genuine manhood. I’m glad it coincided with strongman training, I’m going to take my painful back and knees and train until I’m lying on the grass trying to talk myself out of vomiting... I’ve got to get some stuff out of the basement. Goodnight everyone, I guess we gotta grow up sometime.