Matching Tracksuits

"My age still begins with a one! I'm not that old, E!" L was laughing at the Boy's suggestion that she, turning nineteen today, is, in fact, old.

"When you're nineteen," K added, "thirty seems old. When you're thirty, fifty seems old. And when you're fifty, seventy seems old." I understand the idea, but I think the perceived difference in ages is a exponential curve: Now that I'm in my fifties, for example, it's not just the addition of twenty years that seems "old." Truly "old" for me would be somewhere close to mid-eighties or even nineties.

Old in your teens means having a job and bills. In your thirties, it suggests kids in or barely out of college, and increase in fiscal responsibilities that hints, nonetheless, at relative financial freedom. In your fifties, with a kid in college and another approaching high school, I feel truly "old" is when mobility begins really declining, and that seems to me to be sometime in one's eighties. When doctors' visits are the primary reason for the ever-challenged mobility, that suggests advanced age.

Still, I understood the sentiment: an age seems old until we reach that age.

All of this seemed to receive a coincidental confirmation when, on L's urging, we looked at our year-end Spotify summary -- Spotify Wrapped. K's listening age: 80. How L and I laughed! I knew with my recent re-obsession with Ghost and several similar bands, I had to be younger, musically. But alas, it couldn't outweigh the jazz and classical music that forms the core of my classroom music. My listening age: 84. So my listening age is what I officially consider the very edge of old age, suggesting to some, I suppose, that I have an old soul.

The day as a whole was just as strangely out of sync with our standard daily routine as was this date nineteen years ago. We spent it in the hospital with the newly-born Girl and my parents. Today I took a personal day to appear in court regarding the still-unresolved accident roughly two weeks ago, but the office was not in the courthouse and would not be able to make it time, so everything got reschedule for Monday. K spent most of the morning sleeping: one of her projects was finishing up with the actual waterline tie-in, which is something that requires water to be shut off for a number of people and as such, is usually done at night. She got back home a little after four in the morning, just about an hour before her usual wakeup time.

In the afternoon, I helped the Girl bake some cookies. I broke up the candy canes as we chatted about anything, everything, and nothing of any real significance. College classes, politics, music, funny things we saw on the internet. Everything and nothing. Having those conversations with our daughter is still a relatively new development in our relationship, and, I think, a sign that she's growing out of that teenage reluctance to go beyond monosyllabic responses to many questions much of the time. I was that way, too. Most of us are, I think. and see it's a binder from

Eighteen years ago, the Girl was just that -- a newborn treasure, a gift we were to cherish, a future wrapped in a little bundle. That day, she couldn't open her eyes yet; today, she couldn't drive to school because her car was in the shop. How things have changed.

That day, my mother and father became Nana and Papa. Their first grandchild had just entered our world, and they were thrilled, ready to laugh at the slightest thing, unwilling to let L out of their sight. Now Nana and Papa are no more, unable to see the strong, intelligent, and beautiful woman the Girl has become.

That day, her future was unclear but promising. Today, there is more clarity, there is more promise, but still more mystery.

Tonight, I believe, was a last of sorts. L had her eighteenth birthday party, and from what I can see, it might be the last birthday party we throw for her. Well, not the last: we'll throw her parties for as long as we can, but the last time we do it while she's still living at home.

This was a party the Girl herself planned in large part. She picked the restaurant. She decided which items would be on the menu. She made the guest list and reservations. And for the most part, we were non-participants: the kids stayed in a private room and we took the Boy to the main dining room of the restaurant and went back only when it was time to have the cake.

So different from the parties of the past. In a sense, then, the progression of our parties was a metric for the progression of the Girl. Her first birthday party was completely on us (naturally); her eighteenth, (almost) completely on her. It's another of those "letting go" moments.

But I can't say I mind letting this go: it's nice to see her pick up responsibilities we've always taken care of. It's another sign she's maturing.

Another sign of maturing: of the guests she invited (and those who came), we knew only a couple. It wasn't a question of us simply not making the guest list as we used to; we didn't even know the guests in some cases. Sure, we might have heard the kid's name, but we didn't necessarily know who was who. And that's as it should be as the Girl moves into adulthood.

"The Girl." I've called her that for so long that I can't think of a time I didn't call her that. Legally speaking, come Monday, she'll no longer be the Girl but the Woman. Legally speaking.

Emotionally speaking, she will always be the Girl.