My spouse is going through what all my girlfriends are gleefully referring to as male menopause.

The signs and symptoms? He’s driving a new black Mustang convertible and has joined the gym. What can I say? Could we be any more clichéd if we tried? Probably not. He works hard and he deserves to embrace whatever makes him happy as far as I’m concerned, so what the hell, right? The only thing that truly mystifies and sort of bothers me about any of it is that he seems to be dragging my dad along for the ride, literally.

My dad is a die-hard type-A as is the Guy in the Boxers. So they have had more of an arms-length relationship with one another over the past 17 years rather than a warm fuzzy one. Dad is a retired career officer of the Army genus and the GITB was enlisted swine in the Navy. Strike one. Dad was raised Catholic and converted to Buddhism after one too many tours in Southeast Asia. The GITB is a non-practicing Jew. Strike two. There really is no strike three. All that they have in common has always far outweighed the things that they don’t, but still, there’s always been a bit of antler-ramming and intellectual sparring over the years. Just enough to keep my mom and me entertained. But they have of late become gym buddies, working out together several times a week and hiring a trainer together. Which is weird for me. Dad has even taken to calling the GITB “son.” I’m sure this meets some need for the GITB who grew up without a dad but for him to suddenly bond with mine now is just kind of unexpected. It’s nice. Just weird.

Maybe part of this coming together has to do with the small but steady steps our kid is taking toward full-out adulthood. She is sailing through high school at alarming speed and with great academic success, so much so that she has been invited to transfer to the local college for her junior and senior year of high school, graduating with a high school diploma and an associate’s degree. She’s learning to drive and the old family sedan has been spruced up and is in dry-dock in the neighbor’s extra garage, patiently tapping its toes awaiting her 16th birthday. Her trajectory is making us talk about what we’ll do in two years when she launches from the nest. The possibilities sit whispering in the corner of my writing room and I try to tune them out but they sneak up and tap my elbow and say “Hey! what about…”

Maybe I’ll go get a doctoral degree. Or I could join my friends who do merchandising for Broadway tours and go out on the road for six months. Maybe I’ll tell my bosses to shove it once and for all and totally go out on my own as a consultant. Or maybe school is it. I start teaching at a local small liberal arts college this summer and the idea of settling into academia for the rest of my working career is more appealing now than ever, especially with the fabulous schedule and freedom it affords.

In the meantime, it’s watching the gym rats do their thing and trying not to freak out over the demise of newspapers and the fucked up economy and all the for sale signs in my neighborhood. And the surreal awareness I have as I drive in relative safety and security to pick my kid up at school marveling at the serene blueness of the cloudless sky and the warm sun that it is disrupted by Coast Guard helicopters searching for a group of friends who went out on the water Saturday for a day of fishing and camaraderie and never made it home.