For years the days flowed from an endless tap, the morning waves at the bus stop goodbye, the evening kisses goodnight. The cycle of days spinning to weekends, holidays, to new seasons, the coming of age: a first crush, the last day at elementary school, the first overnight away from home, the last baby tooth.

In this way it should come as no surprise that Lily, almost 20, doesn’t recognize the overhead music as The Rolling Stones (it’s her first time hearing it) and remarks I like this, in what sounds like an invitation for me to identify it, ‘Wild Horses,’ from a record with a funny cover I say, then send her a link to it in the morning. I like being with her the first time she hears new music she likes in hopes it makes an imprint, as some songs have for me, and I can be a part of that scene, her growing up.

As a parent you start to recede more as your kids get older; it’s got that deep sadness like watching your family dog slow down and struggle to get up the stairs, how cruel nature can be, we finally figure things out and then it’s time to go.

The most fun I have as a dad is in those learning moments when I’m passing something down, something worthwhile they can use. I’ve never been one to teach my kids practical things like how to check the engine oil or prune a tree: but Lily said something to me over winter break that really hit, during an argument with her now ex-boyfriend when he’d accused her of not being able to respect men, to name one she did respect he demanded, and she said my dad! My dad quit drinking when I was going through treatment, she’d said, and I knew then my move to sobriety was larger than myself. It had become part of her narrative about men, and selflessness.

Part of me knew that was the deal with parenthood: you get this chance to be a role model. But part of me never owned up to that because I was too selfish to change, too much a kid myself.

So I remember now my first and last drink but the details don’t matter. I write things like this because it’s what I want to remember more: a Monday matinee with her watching the new Bob Dylan movie, happy hour at the restaurant where she heard Wild Horses for the first time. Happy hour indeed. A whole life it could be, coming of age.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, writing

Tags: aging, Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Nostalgia, parenting