Last year, my cousin in Sydney had a baby, an irresistible little boy with sparkling hazel eyes and chubby wrists. His arrival was excitedly anticipated in all corners of my family. Dormant WhatsApp groups were reanimated, a rolling feed of scaremongering parenting articles (“Thumb sucking: how addictive is it really?”); baby bodily fluid updates (“Today we learned about puking through the nose”); and a photo challenge in which relatives outdid each other in finding kid versions of boring adult things (“Look, a tax return game, for toddlers!”).
“You know what he really needs,” I ventured in the group chat, “a Fisher-Price Build-Your-Own-Pension *insert crying face emoji*! OMG, am I right, guys?
They were not amused.
You see, I have a confession. I’m a millennial. I like avocados, working freelance and posting the occasional selfie because, hey, have you ever seen someone in this much debt look this good?
Like others of my generation, the regular trappings of adulthood – marriage, home ownership, children, a pension – seem increasingly out of reach. But if that version of adulthood is impossible, then it’s time to invent a new one – a task that falls to me. I am, after all, the only millennial in my family: my mum, the youngest of her lot, had me later in life, and until the arrival of this new bundle of joy, I remained the youngest.
I am determined to set an example for my new nephew, and demonstrate that this version of adulthood is both acceptable and achievable. It is time for me to shed my generation’s reputation as eternal adolescents and rise to the challenge.
But first, I will need to master a few things. I will need to learn to drive. I will need to be able to explain to my mum what I actually do for a living. It is time I embraced the great outdoors (my partner is very, very English and wants us to do more rural activities). I want to become punctual, and I would like to be able to swim (another thing my very, very English boyfriend likes is water, being near it and in it).
And then there’s the other stuff – the grownup stuff I don’t yet know I need to do – but which will undoubtedly involve a lot of queueing and being on hold.
Adulthood is a mysterious beast. Just when you think you’ve cracked it, it has some other little joker up its sleeve – a big soul-searching conundrum that can’t be fixed with a Topshop gift card. It’ll be a challenge and an adventure, and whether I’m up to it will depend on who you ask. (Friends: “Yes!” Mum: “Oh dear.”) But I’m ready to give it a go.
