Growing up

How old do you have to be before news that friends are getting divorced stops being shocking?

I feel a bit like a bad Carrie Bradshaw knockoff as I type that sentence -- can't you just see the Sex and the City episode it would spawn? -- but it's something I've been pondering for the last 24 hours. We got an email yesterday from some friends who are getting divorced. I won't go into the details, because they're none of the Internet's business and I don't know much anyway, but the email was very classy, informing us that they'd decided to go their separate ways but plan to remain good friends. The news was not entirely surprising, but I still felt this odd shock that I am old enough to have friends who are getting divorced.

I know this is totally ridiculous, that there's no minimum age for divorce, but it seems like such a grownup thing... something people of our parents' generation do. Another friend got divorced last year, which was also shocking, especially since we'd been at his wedding in 2001. In both cases, the decision seems like the right one, though it's still sad. (Neither couple had kids, though there are animal custody issues that had to be resolved in both cases.)

I guess all of this goes back to my perpetual feeling that we are -- that I am -- just playing at this grownup thing, that the house and the mortgage (and the second mortgage) and the job and even the baby are all trappings of this role I'm playing of a responsible, mature adult. Saying it that way sounds like I'm resentful of it all, which I'm not (though I have to admit to laying awake for a while last night, pondering the cost of daycare and its impact on our already meager finances). Sometimes it just doesn't feel real, that's all.