Something terrible has happened.
I knew it would happen eventually. I just thought I had more time.
Recently, I was grooming my facial hair and I noticed a long, gray/white hair poking out from my chin. I nearly vomited.
is this it?
has life ended at 29?
why is it so much longer than all the other hairs?
As I stood there, in the bathroom, making arrangements for my funeral, a famous proverb came to mind.
"Gray hair is a crown of splendor."
That feels self-serving. I think Solomon was just a 20-something going gray prematurely. The proverb can shut it for all I care.
And frankly, I've met many people with gray hair and for every gray-haired sage there's a dozen fools. I suppose there's one more fool in the mix now.
But there I was, just seconds away from an irrecoverable spiral of self-destruction and beard dye, trying to make sense of what had happened to me, when I realized why this happened.
There's really only one person to blame for this. I can promise you I didn't have gray hairs 10 months ago.
It's Josie's fault.
Becoming a parent has aged me. It's changed me. It is a relentless onslaught of stress, responsibility, and chaos. And Josie is God's instrument of chaos.
I used to laugh at parents that would tell me how happy they were, and then they would describe the details of their lives as sleepless nights, zero down-time, less money than ever, constant concern for another human life, and I would think to myself, "Wait a minute. Didn't they say they were happy?"
It's incongruous.
They weren't lying, though. I know that now. I'm not sure how every metric for well-being can be worse and life can still be better than it was before. It's the great mystery of parenthood. What happens to a person that makes them lose all sense and become totally enamored with something so destructive?
But I love my little girl. And who I am now -- gray hair and all -- is more myself than whoever I was before.
So from now on, when I look in the mirror, and I see that disgustingly long, gray hair, when I stare death in the face and grieve my lost youth... I'll remind myself of the thing that really matters.
My hairs may turn grey, but it's a small price to pay for a crown. And Josie is mine.
コメント