Coming of age

In the last month or so, I have had the privilege of joining two of our classmates -- Nurit Sonnenschein and Paul Sarkozi -- when they had a child celebrate a bar/bat mitzvah. Both of coming of age ceremonies were incredibly moving, personal celebrations. Nurit comes from a gifted musical family, and her family celebrated Nurit's son's bar mitzvah with soulful prayers set to music written by Nurit's father and performed by Nurit and her siblings and children. Paul's family marked their daughter's bat mitzvah with heartfelt and deeply spiritual prayers written by Paul and his wife. I couldn't help come away from these ceremonies without a few thoughts.

First, I was struck by the fact that the children we were celebration are not much younger than we were when we all first met. Many of our children are nearly old enough to go to college (and some of us already have college aged kids). It can't be that we are that old.

Second, and more seriously, I was struck by the maturity, poise and insightfulness of the children of our classmates. Although I spent some time in college worrying about how not to become a parent, I did not give a lot of thought back then to the sort of parent I (or my classmates) might be. Having been a parent for some time, now, I must say that I have been impressed by our classmates' parenting ability of late.