What little toddler, for example, can't wait for his or her first trip on the big, yellow school bus? Of course, once they reach the kindergarten room, they cry and bawl for Mommy and home! What child doesn't dream of one day being a big kid, and carrying books to school like his teen-aged siblings?
I remember in my middle school years (formerly known as "Junior High") all the Catholic kids buzzing about this mysterious passage of Confirmation. Being a Protestant, I had no clue what was happening to my classmates. The one Jewish kid I knew, of course, had his Bar Mitzveh. So the sole middle school initiation I endured was locating the nerd table in the cafeteria. Oh, and having to bring for Gym Class that article of Personal Protective Equipment known colloquially as the Jock Strap.
High school brings a few more milestones. Latina girls and their families celebrate their fifteenth birthday in a Quincinera, while in other homes they treat their daughters like a princess on her Sweet Sixteen. Senior Prom is another big rite of passage. I missed mine, being an introvert and socially ignorant. The excuse I give now is that I couldn't go because Wendy was just in second grade at the time! Senior Week is probably one of the best, most care-free weeks of your life....and one you'll never have again. Graduation... what can we say... the biggest rite of passage for every teen-ager, introducing you to that foreboding place called "The REAL WORLD" (sinister laughter).
Another great rite of passage comes with getting your driver's license. But as the folkhero Peter Parker famously noted, "With great power there must also come...great responsibility". Yeah, responsibility.
Seems like each of these milestones and passages keeps heaping more and more of that resposibility stuff on us!
I recently had the opportunity and privilege of attending my son's graduation from Boot Camp at Parris Island. Now a military graduation is not at all like an academic one with all its speeches, but instead demonstrates discipline with precision, synchronised movements.
Another big milestone in your life is getting your first own place. This is such a huge life event I'm going to devote an entire article to it. Leaving Mom & Dad's and setting up your own home is like what all these other things were leading up to. That, and, of course marriage. When you go from being me to being us.
Your Wedding Day is a huge milestone and rite of passage, worthy of all the pomp & ceremony that go along with it. Remember Senior Week? Your Honeymoon is sorta like that, only way better!
A milestone a lot of people would like to avoid (but really can't) is that 30th birthday. It's not so much thirty they dread as what comes after. But all you twentysomethings out there, thirty ain't so bad. From where I stand it looks pretty darn good! Forty, and Fifty, ya just kind of take in stride, knowing you can't stem the flow of time.
The birth of your first child is also a major milestone, again putting you into a whole new world. But wait, there's more: one day you become a grandparent, and your identity and role changes again.
Life milestones after that begin to get suckier, like the passing of your parents. Retirement, with all its pluses and minuses. Then one day, the death of your spouse, and widowhood. Finally, the culmination of all these things, and your body just stops doing things it's supposed to do.....and you see your day is coming.
"...we spend our years as a tale that is told. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their stength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away."
So wrote Moses in the 90th Psalm.
Inevitably comes that final waymark, when your mortal remains are all dressed up in that wooden box for all your family and friends to come and view one last time. And somewhere in that funeral parlor may be a collage of photos marking those many milestones you've met and mastered along your way. Life is beautiful, from conception to death.
And milestones are another of the things I love about life.
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