Column: Life’s Major Milestones – Valley News

My first step toward my first major milestone was an awkward one. At the age of 15, in the White River Junction office of the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles, I took the written learners permit test. I handed my test to a dedicated civil servant, who reviewed my answers, and said, One too many wrong, Mark. I detected glee in her voice.

In the waiting room, I told my mother I had failed the test. She said, Yeah right and started to walk out. I said it again, stressing that I was not joking. Her reaction is chiseled into my memory:

I didnt think anyone failed that test.

We laugh about it now.

Regardless of when one gets ones drivers license (in addition to my written fiasco, I failed the road test; apparently my hill start in a manual transmission car made a sedan behind me brake on the ascent up to Hartford High), it is a monumental life change. Suddenly, with that authorization to operate a motor vehicle, independence, speed, danger, friends and responsibility come flying into your life. Things get a lot more interesting very quickly. Soon, I was on the back roads of Strafford or in the hills of Etna, chasing a party, a swimming hole, a walk in the woods, a place to disappear.

Eventually, my attention turned to 18 and the right to vote, fight in a war, go to any movie, and generally be regarded in legal terms as an adult. Honestly, this milestone elicited more of a shrug than a celebration; it was cool, but nothing more. Five months after my 18th birthday, however, I hit another jackpot milestone: I left home for the first time, moving into a college dormitory where, apparently, there was no supervision. Want to come in at 3 a.m.? Sleep until noon? Play music loud? Leave underwear on the ground? Not change your sheets? Go 48 hours without telling anyone where you are? All were permitted in this new utopia.

Like just about every undergraduate in recent history, I discovered quickly that, while 21 was clearly going to be a nice threshold to cross, college afforded plenty of opportunity to drink alcohol before reaching that magic birthday. Additionally, I spent my junior year when I turned 21 in the spring in Paris, where there was no discernible drinking age. By the time my big day arrived, I had already been drinking legally for eight months. I gathered with a group of American friends and we toasted my birthday, but the celebration didnt approach those happening back on campus.

These chronological, state-supervised milestones seemingly cease after 21, and a vaguer set of markers appears on the horizon. After the dorm room, there is Apartment Living. No matter where I have laid my head on the second floor of a Victorian house, above a preschool in Middlebury; in a sweltering room of about 40 square feet on the sixth floor of a Parisian walk-up; in an affordable housing complex with carpet in the kitchen; in a Washington, D.C., rowhouse; anywhere that wasnt owned by my parents there has been an unmistakable aura of freedom. You cannot have any idea of what it feels like until you experience it, but when you do, giving it up becomes unimaginable.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one person to join up with another, some of that independence evaporates. Congratulations, you have reached another milestone: the live-in partner, often swiftly followed by engagement and marriage.

The physical and emotional intensity of courtship and commitment are all-consuming, and it is easy to trick your silly little mind into thinking that this is it: You are a grown-up! Living with someone who sleeps in the same bed as you! Monogamy! Spicy conversations about how to load the dishwasher! Establishing a rotation between your parents and her parents for the holidays! Anniversaries over- and under-celebrated! Morning breath! Inside jokes and knowing looks!

You are at the zenith of growth, secure in your choices, your path, your happiness, your life. Living together in a space that is perfect for two people, with lots of professional obligations but room for romance and spontaneity ... it is good.

Right at this perfect moment is when evolution intrudes, gnawing at you, filling your head with the supreme drug for your ego. Perhaps the world needs a little bit more of me and my wife in it, you think. Nay, not perhaps, the world definitely needs more of us! We should bring more humans to Earth. Together, you turn a murmured conversation into a drumbeat, building a stronger and stronger case for why you must add to the population. Even the vocabulary supports the idea: It is not CON-create but PRO-create.

When the baby arrives, euphoria, satisfaction and an overwhelming sense of accomplishment rush into your lives. You have joined the billions and billions of humans who have, over tens of thousands of years, kept this marvelous adventure moving forward.

Late last year, a friend welcomed her first child. It's all true, I told her. Parenthood is The Game Changer, the permanent, relentless, oppressive milestone, impossible to ignore or escape. It's all true, I informed her. I cry about twice a day because my kids make me so proud I burst, and I cry two additional times a day because my kids make me so infuriated I burst.

It's all true, I told her, about the nitwits out there who try to convince us that they have decoded parenting, that theyve got the answers. These people are exhausting and to be avoided at all costs, I admonished, because their children, generally, end up about as wonderful or as disappointing as all children. I told my friend that she would look back with howls of laughter at the money she used to spend on things she liked to do. When that new body arrives, those days are gone. You will sleep when you are dead, I told her.

Parenthood, I wrote to my friend, is a daily, minute-by-minute miracle. Unexpected laughs. Crazy joys. Incomprehensible behavior. Wild hugging sessions. Debilitating exasperation. Glorious belief in the power of our species. Tears over lollipops and pajamas. More kisses than you could possibly fathom. Smiles that make your knees buckle. Countless introductions to things that blow a childs mind: whistles, whales, snow, Goodnight Moon, Fleetwood Mac, swimming, dental floss, the moonwalk, poison ivy, skipping stones, English muffins with peanut butter and peaches. Along with all those truths, there is the comforting knowledge that whatever happens between you is unique, never before seen in the history of the world.

As a parent, when you get a free second, you cloak yourself in these experiences, and you realize that all those other milestones in your life were just practice for the big stuff, training wheels to prepare you for what actually matters.

Mark Lilienthal lives in Norwich. He can be reached at mlilient@gmail.com.

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Column: Life's Major Milestones - Valley News