Reflections on adulthood (or another title that makes it sound as though I am the brown/gray-bob-hairdoed author of a post-menopausal book)

Lately, I've been battling youth and age.

I don't mean age in the sense of 25. Age is just time gone by. But I mean this part of my life where school is done, summer is ending, and I'm waking up at 6:30 a.m. only to listen to a radio morning show and looking before changing lanes in Minneapolis rush hour traffic. So sometimes, when my alarm goes off and I put on nice shoes and lock the door before I leave, I feel old. And other times, such as today when I'm on an important phone call and thinking about how interesting it would be if there was a law against farting in public (much like the smoking ban) and one could call it flatulence law, I feel entirely young. I am the youngest person in the office, and sometimes I'm afraid it shows. Then other times I think hey, I'm the youngest, and I'm still pulling this shit together.

Graywolf, which I love, started officially last Wednesday and went into practice today. Working there makes me miss X and P, mostly regarding literary discussions or hanging inappropriate submissions of artistic photos of a naked woman on the piano/poems about a naked women on a piano--on the wall. I feel young and old at Graywolf too: old when I'm the oldest of all the interns, who are mostly undergraduates who ask who Robert Pinsky is; young when I am the only intern in the office sharing white wine and cupcakes (that's right, white wine and cupcakes, delicious, gourmet cupcakes) and am asked if I am old enough to drink and wish I had first home or first child stories to share.

Ah, strange. I am adult in the working sense of the word, but at the bottom of corporate ladders and such--merely a contract writer, not fulltime; merely an intern who is paid (happily paid) in damaged books and white wine and cupcakes. It is odd to get paychecks weekly, paychecks that pay for things such as student loans and gas and hummus. Sometimes I forget they are coming. Sometimes I wonder what adults do with paychecks--maybe use them to buy luxuries such as leather pants, 3-ply toilet paper, or wooly steering wheel covers--or maybe they put them in these things called "savings accounts" that the kids down the street have been whispering about. I am still living paycheck to paycheck, and new things, such as car insurance, an overwhelming electric bill, or alcoholic beverages, stop me from saving. Not adult.

Then other days, I find that I am picking up after myself or looking up recipes online and making my own tomato sauce. Adult. (Adult-ish). Humph.

David is in Phoenix for the week, pretending to be a doctor, and I feel weird in this house by myself. The walls are thin and I keep thinking there's someone downstairs, when it's just the neighbors humping the wall, or whatever they do over there. The good thing is that with him gone and unable to distract me with the temptations of renting movies and doing nothing, that I've been able to get back into the running routine that I happily abandoned at the beginning of summer. A word of warning to runners: it is desperately easy to get out of shape, and the act of turning yourself out of the heaping pile of ugly and fat you feel like you've become is not easy. There are hills.

Last week, in a really old Mary Oliver moment, David and I saw a deer on the bike path. We'd just got done riding our bikes to the sculpture garden. I was complaining about how bad the bike seat had hurt my crotchal region, he was riding 10 feet in front of me, and then a teenage deer crossed in front of us. David turned to me and we both blew spitty shhhhs! through our index fingers and pulled over. The deer didn't run, which I appreciated. He just poked his nose around in the grass, stayed close enough to touch (but of course, if I'd tried, he'd have run away) and occasionally watched us watching him, just like a puppy who is about to pee on the rug or do some other naughty puppy thing. Head down, peek, head up, head down. He was young, strong, and beautiful. I love this state and love even more evenings after work.

Nonetheless, I've still spent this summer constantly not feeling old enough and at the same time feeling so old. This has nothing to do with the deer, nor is the deer a metaphor. The deer is the deer. I'm just saying, that's all.