Any day now, my wife and I are expecting to welcome a new son to the Perrone household. Even though this is our 6th child, and that seems like a lot, this is only our 6th time going through the experience of having a baby. Think about all the things you’ve done only 6 times in your life… you probably don’t consider yourself an expert in them.
While changing diapers and sleepless nights are old hat now, I could never imagine not being amazed at the miracle of childbirth and the arrival of a new baby. My older children are excited. The two year old has no idea how much her world will change.
This child, after what we hope and pray will be a routine birth, will be our 4th son, and I think about how I came from a family of 4 sons and how my father also came from a family of 4 sons. I get the bonus of a couple of daughters. May the pattern continue forever!
Also, causing me a bit of introspection lately is I recently turned 40.
One of the vivid memories of my childhood was my father’s 40 birthday. I remember the party decorated with these big black balloons with the white words “Over the Hill” printed on each side. I had no idea what that meant as a little kid and the long time I spent puzzling over its meaning is probably why I still remember the event and these balloons decades later.
With my dad and many of the other attendees from that party having since passed, I find myself pondering middle age.
When I was younger, the cultural stereotype of a middle-aged man was a man in crisis; trying to recapture a lost youth by stereotypically buying a fast car, ridding his hair of gray, making awkward attempts to fit into the fashions of the day and maybe even having an affair just because; trying to find himself, trying to be young again.
I never actually met a man who put serious energy into any of these things. In my circle, mid life was much more likely to be met as a long resigned exhale of “yeah, this is life.” Perhaps the tragedy of mid-life is giving into nostalgia, thinking that the good days are gone and you’ll never reach the peak of some youthful memory.
And I’m old enough now to potentially fall into this trap myself. I realized this when I stumbled across a song designed to ratchet up the nostalgia of younger Gen X/older millennials to infinity. It’s strange to now be a part of the nostalgia demographic.
Friends At Midlife
But nostalgia is often very lonely because men are not replacing or renewing childhood friendships in midlife. In doing research for my book, I spoke to hundreds of guys and based on those conversations most men do not have very many close friends. This appears to be a broad trend.
Many of the men I spoke to not only said they didn’t have very many close friends, but also said they didn’t see the point in making time for such friends. One man said:
“I’m not a kid anymore; I don’t need buddies to grab a Slurpee and play GoldenEye with.”
The modern male’s disavowal of friendship reminds me of the last line of the movie “Stand By Me”, which I’ve never actually seen but has been quoted endlessly because it resonates with many adults:
“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12… does anybody?
When you were a kid, you were doing new things all the time. You were going on adventures, or at least what seemed to you like adventures. Time slowed down, the memories were etched and romanticized in your mind forever; now the subject of intense nostalgia. But the endless adult cycle of wake up, work, chores, screens and sleep again makes time feel like a dream and our days go by so fast they seem to have been stolen from us; and would-be friends are hard to reach.
The challenge adolescent boys face and the challenge middle aged men face are intertwined to a degree we don’t appreciate.
It’s my belief that the latter must be solved first in order for the former to be healed. That is, boys today will only be rescued by men who have rescued themselves from the memory of their own youth and make manhood dignifying and engaging. But this is not a solo job and men are so isolated from each other that doing this is extremely difficult.
But by making a great effort to make great friends and do great things with them, men together craft a viable manhood for themselves and an enviable one for any boys fortunate enough to be invited to participate.
Yes, hopefully it won’t involve a Slurpee and a 30 year old video game; we can certainly raise our expectations just a little.
But as a man and a father, I’ve come to appreciate that my friends are just as much for me as they are for my kids. Adult friendship is the beginning of shared culture. That by working with my friends, doing fun things with them, doing projects with them, creating with them, challenging and stretching myself with them, and sending my kids to learn from them, I am offering my children a clear, duplicable picture of manhood. My boys will know what to do. My girls will know what to look for.
Men are providers yes; not just providers of food and shelter today, but providers of the future.
As I sit here pondering birth, fatherhood and midlife, I’ve come to believe this is the true purpose of midlife, not to try to recapture or mourn a lost youth, but to renew myself and other men as examples, teachers, and mentors to the generation that is coming up to bat, so they can surpass us; but we won’t make it easy for them.
Not only do you need more friends, your kids need you to have more friends too.
Great post. Congrats on creating a hamlet in your home. I'm flat-out jealous. About mid-life, friendship does get trickier. In my experience, it takes greater intentionality, maybe just bc, as you point out, adult life is *busy.* It takes prioritizing and setting aside time amid the tumult. Shared activities can be key. Only other thought--I've about a decade on you, and, apart from the inevitable decline of the body (despite all best efforts), everything else just gets better. Much better. Greater clarity. Greater perspective. The world widens. Enjoy!
I am firmly convinced that we must friend our whole lives long. We cannot eat, sleep, breathe, or love enough in one go to tide us for the duration, and we have no control over who is close enough to us to even really be a friend and not merely a friend emeritus. It is an activity, like sex, the effects of which fade with time and must be constantly cultivated and engaged in to unite the parties effectively.
Almost everyone I have ever talked to about it says that children will not take from the hand of a parent that which the parent does not actually have in their hand, no matter how many times the child is told about its importance. If we want our kids to friend, we must friend. I very much appreciate your encouragement to do that, not as a self care routine, but as an integral part of our duty to exemplify and to bolster our families with the proverbial village.