Don't panic. No one is missing. But a child has gone and turned into an adult, at least as far as the world is concerned for most things.

Today I took my daughter's oldest daughter (same as I have done for each of my son's two daughters on their 18th birthday) out for her birthday lunch to her favorite restaurant with a present. We made a quick stop on the way at our local Drug Mart. That is where she realized what her present was when I opened the envelope I was carrying at the photo counter and asked for passport pictures to go with the filled-out application, her birth certificate and the two money orders. Next stop was the post office a few blocks away where she had to take over and raise her right hand and swear an oath of 'accurate and true' statement for the first time in her young life.

I could see the wheels turning in her head as she finally drove us to the restaurant. After placing our orders I asked her how much different she felt from the day before when she woke up being eighteen as opposed to seventeen. She chuckled and said 'not a bit different at all'. I asked again, 'wasn't there a major change for you?' Again, with a bigger chuckle, an affirmative 'NO'. I told her there WAS a major change. The change was not a change in her but a change in the world. The day before she could have said, signed or done most anything and it would have meant little or nothing. Today that same world, with all of it's complications and power, can and WILL hold you responsible for whatever you do.

We talked about many things during our hour-and-half lunch, mostly related to the fact that learning to become a person that will give and take of life's experiences, rewards and abuse, is not something that comes from a bolt of lightning or is injected into you. It comes from all the accumulated knowledge and experience you have up to an arguable and arbitrary moment determined by other authority. Everyone reaches this divide with different perspectives and amounts of knowledge and experience. The point is you HAVE reached that point in our society.

I gave her what little I have and she received it warmly if only an additional thoughts for the journey in front of her. It was a very nice day I believe we both felt.

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