By Jim Hagarty
2008
I used to mark many of the milestones in my life in relation to how I had finally come of age for this thing or the other.
It was all about getting to finally do things that were never available to you before.
Old enough to drive the tractor. Old enough to shave. And believe it or not, old enough to smoke. When I was young, the question was not, will it hurt his health but is he old enough. That was quite a big day when no one objected when you lit up – or downed a bottle of beer.
Then, of course, there was driving the car. And girlfriends.
But the real passage from boy to man came when my dad’s clothes fit me. To imagine, when you’re young, that you would ever grow so much as to be able to throw on his jacket or boots was just impossible.
Yet, the day came and while it was a big one for me, I never wondered for a moment what he must have thought about it, if he thought about it at all.
Now, as a dad myself, the milestones are recorded somewhat in reverse. You know the kids are growing – the clothing bills are enough evidence of that – but they’ll never catch up. Surely. These are people who you used to be able to carry around in the palm of one hand.
One day, you try on your son’s new shoes and find they are too big for you. Too big. That’s impossible. He gives you his old ones – hardly broken in – and they fit like a glove.
When you first saw those feet, each of them was about as big as your thumb. Now, they’re bigger than your feet.
Each generation, it seems, grows a little larger than the one before it. A little better looking. And very often, a little smarter too. As far as I know, my kids aren’t counting the days till they can smoke. And at this point anyway, they think that drugging and over-drinking hold no appeal.
They are more conscious of the importance of a good diet than I ever was.
I often feel a pang when I see another sign that the birds will fly from the nest someday not too many years down the road. But I take some consolation in being the beneficiary of the good taste in clothing with which both my dad and my son seem to have been blessed.
So for the next while, in any case, if you see a marked improvement in my attire, it might not be as a result of some sudden infusion of clothing sense on my part but a passage, once more, through the closet and drawers of another generation.
