Rites of Passage

Suddenly there come times when everything is different—you're somehow another person

Several years ago my parents, my wife, my son,, and I ate at one of those restaurants where the menu is written on a blackboard. After a wonderful dinner, the waiter set the bill in the middle of the table. That's when it happened: my father did not reach for the bill.

Conversation continued. Finally it dawned on me. I was supposed to pick up the bill! After hundreds of restaurant meals with my parents, after a lifetime of thinking of my father as the one who had the money, it had all changed. I reached for the check, and my view of myself was suddenly altered. I was an adult.

Some people mark off their lives in years? I measure mine in small events—in rites of passage. I did not become a young man at a particular age, like 13, but rather when a kid walked into the store where I worked and called me "mister". He repeated it several times, looking straight at me. The realization hit like a punch: Me! I was suddenly a mister.

There have been other milestones. The cops of my youth always seemed big, even huge, and of course they were older than I was. Then one day they were suddenly neither. In fact, some were kids—short kids at that. The day came when I suddenly realized that all the football players in the game I was watching were younger than I was. They were just big kids. With that milestone went the dream that someday, maybe, I too could be a football player. Without ever having reached the hill, I was over it.

I never thought that I would fall asleep in front of the television set as my father did. Now it's what I do best. I never thought that I would go to the beach and not swim. Yet I spent all of August at the seaside and never once went into the ocean, I never thought that I would like opera, but now the sadness and combination of voice and orchestra appeal to me. I never thought that I would prefer to stay home evenings, but now I find myself passing up parties. I used to think that people who watched birds were strange, but this summer I found myself watching them, and maybe I'll get a book on the subject. I long for a religious conviction that I never thought I'd want, and in arguments with my son, I repeat what my father used to say to me. I still lose.

One day I bought a house. One day—what a day!— I became a father, and not too long after that I picked up the bill for my own father. I thought then it was a rite of passage for me. But one day, when I was a little older, I realized it was one for him too. Another milestone.