F*CK
I’M
40

The car was quiet. This should have been my first warning.

I have three children, so silence in the car is not a normal acoustic condition. It usually means somebody has fallen asleep, somebody is about to throw up, or all three are coordinating something that will eventually require a professional cleaner.

Most drives sound like a small country losing control of its government. Someone is touching someone. Someone is looking at someone in a way that has been formally prohibited. A water bottle has crossed a border. A snack has been distributed unfairly. There is crying, shouting, a legal appeal, and at least one accusation beginning with, "But she always—"

This time there was nothing. I stopped at a red light. My hands were on the steering wheel. The children were behind me, temporarily alive and not reporting one another to the authorities. My mind did what minds do when they are given six consecutive seconds without a crisis.

It wandered somewhere unhelpful.

Then the thought arrived.

Fuck.

I'm forty.

I'm the grown-up.

Not a grown-up. That would have been manageable. A grown-up is somebody you can call. Somebody who knows which form to complete, which doctor to see, whether the noise from the air conditioner is normal, and what you are supposed to do after receiving a letter from the tax authority.

I had become the grown-up. There was nobody else in the front seat.

This was strange because I had not applied for the position. I had received no training. Nobody had asked whether I felt ready to become the person responsible for three other people, a marriage, a house, several insurance policies, a rotator cuff, and passwords to accounts I no longer remembered opening.

I had been promoted through attrition. The people above me were getting older. The people below me were getting sarcastic. Somewhere in the middle, a vacancy had appeared.

Congratulations. You're management now.

How does a man become so lost while his children keep finding him?

They find me in every room.

Dad, where is my shirt?

Dad, can I have more screen time?

Dad, she touched me.

Dad, what are we doing tomorrow?

They approach with the confidence of people who believe the answer is stored inside me. I admire this faith. It is unsupported by the evidence but emotionally useful.

I still look toward older people for the final answer. My parents. A doctor. An accountant. Anybody wearing a uniform or carrying a clipboard. Somewhere, surely, there is a real adult who understands the system and can tell me whether we are doing this correctly.

Then my children look toward me.

The terrifying possibility is that this is what my parents experienced too. Perhaps the grown-ups of childhood were not people who knew. They were people who answered because silence would frighten the children.

Authority may be uncertainty delivered without showing the loading icon.

I know things. I have experience. I can identify which child is lying from the unnecessary amount of detail. I can pack a family car, make three lunches, negotiate a bedtime, and recognize which noise from the dishwasher means money.

But competence arrives in small islands. The ocean remains.

At forty, you can be deeply experienced and completely lost at the same time. You know how to keep the day moving without knowing whether the life is moving in the correct direction.

The children do not ask that question. They ask where their shirt is.

At thirty-three, forty was a distant cultural concept. At thirty-nine, it was still a sinister character I did not resemble. Then I became forty, looked in the mirror, and saw nothing.

Looking at a forty-year-old in the mirror when you are forty is basically seeing zero.

You don't see a forty-year-old. You see yourself. The same face from yesterday, plus whatever damage occurred during sleep.

That was why the thought at the traffic light felt so abrupt. My appearance had not delivered the message. My birthday had not delivered it. The forms that automatically calculated my age had tried, but I considered that an administrative opinion.

The realization arrived because of the seating arrangement.

My children were in the back.

I was in the front.

There was no older person driving.

The light turned green. The children immediately resumed whatever civil war had been paused behind me. Somebody shouted that somebody else had touched the invisible line separating the seats. A bottle fell. I drove forward.

I still had no idea where I was going.

But apparently I was responsible for getting everyone there.