The traditional American rite of passage into adulthood was of little interest to my firstborn when he turned 21. He had one beer at dinner with his family, quaffed a second with a friend and was home in bed by 11.
The night my second child turned 21, she was working as a camp counselor, tending a gaggle of homesick 12-year-olds in a tent on an island south of the Canadian border. She had no access to fermented anything, unless you count hamburger pickles and wet socks.
As for the third, who turned 21 recently, he made up for the both of them, if "making up" means drinking a cobalt blue drink served on top of an oversized flashlight without throwing up.
Benjie's aforementioned older brother, now 29, helped transform the evening into the enchanted occasion he never had, slipping into our Ohio college town on a late flight from D.C. and shepherding his brother through the cluster of downtown bars that hand out weird concoctions to kids, er adults, on the occasion of their 21st.
I tagged along for a bit, too, until about Drink 3 when I realized my Mom-tude questions were buzz-killing the festivities: "Uh, should you be mixing those liquors?" and "How many drinks did you say you would limit to each hour?"
Neither condoning, nor condemning, I had no choice but to trust my typically sensible, now adult, kids to a) drink water between bar hops; b) take an Uber home; and c) not glorify alcohol forever. Personally, I don't get how six shots of Jagermeister a man or woman make. But it's how we roll in Ohio, Alabama and the rest, where the age for legally consuming alcohol happens to coincide with the nationally recognized age of adult consent and responsibility.
We do in this country also consider the Bar and Bat Mitzvah and the Sacrament of Confirmation rites of passage. But those require a specific religiosity, not to mention prepubescence. Some might also point to prom, graduating from high school and going away to college as ROPs for the years closer to true independence. But those are missing physical prowess, unless you count moving heavy boxes into your dorm room.
I think "rite of passage," and I think of scaling a mountain or, say, slaying a boar, Odysseus-style, each of which requires physicality, courage, preparation, deep concentration and community support. I think of the boys of the Hamer tribe of Ethiopia, who achieve manhood by jumping across the backs of eight cows four times, and the Satare-Mawe of the Amazon who put their hands in gloves of stinging jungle ants 20 times for 10 minutes at a time, imprinting the philosophy that a life without suffering is no life of all.
Of course we don't have access to eight cows, boars or a jungle full of stinging ants, and Benjie was too busy studying for a Medieval Philosophy test last week to scale a mountain.
The most authentic and universally accessible rite of passage anywhere within American childhood that I can see is potty training. There's clearly a physicality involved, as well as deep concentration and community involvement, though the missing piece at the age of 2 or 3 is cognition. Only Mom knows why she's applauding so long and hard with tears streaming down her face: Potty train and you get to go to 3-year-old preschool. Potty train and you don't have to wear sticky plastic next to your clammy bottom anymore. Potty train and Mom gets to quit diapers, too.
While we're talking Mom, we maternal types could use a few rites of passage of our own. As of last week, I have raised all three of my children to adulthood. Where's my Jagermeister?
For now, drinking's what we've got for ritualizing adulthood. True enough, Benjie did have to show some physical ability during the night in question as walked from that last bar to the Uber at the curb.
He had to have enough consciousness to swallow the Advil and the glass of water his supportive community/brother brought him as he crawled into bed.
Much like the poor boys of the Amazon, he also had to function the next day despite how he was feeling.
Come to think of it, hmm, maybe that's the rite of suffering passage, accomplishment and celebration.
It's not so much the raising of the glass that makes the man or woman.
It's surviving the hangover.
