Oh my gosh, he's gone and done it. He's grown up. Our firstborn son is now 18. Alex is eighteen. How did that happen? It escapes me.

Motherhood seems to have two speeds. One is overdrive and the other is fatigued coma. Both of these speeds make it impossible to accurately judge the passage of time. Consider overdrive. You are so busy slapping things together. For instance, halloween costumes, sibling relations, peanut-butter-and-jellys, outfits that make your belly bulge less, and more Slap, slap, slap in warp speed. Thus you have no time to sit and reflect on the near-adult status of one of your babies.

Or, you are in a fatigued coma. This is when you get out of bed in the morning already calculating when you can get back in. You are in a fog of sleep deprivation and despair. The Bible says that to the Lord, one day is a thousand years. Tired moms can relate. We routinely have days that seem to last an eternity. Monday alone is one hundred years. I often feel I do a day's worth of work before 9 a.m. The sheer exhaustion must be akin to being oxygen-deprived at the top of Mt. Everest. If you would stop to sit and reflect, you'd fall asleep right in the laundry pile.

Both of these motherhood conditions conspire to make significant birthdays slap us right upside the head. I have stopped paying attention to my own birthday. (This does not mean I don't want presents, rather that I've stopped counting!). In order to figure out how old I am, I remember my husband's age and subtract eleven. The numbers are all foggy in my head. Until this week. One number stuck out.

Eighteen.

Eighteen. The age you can vote, be drafted and apparently, the age you can smoke a cigar. That's how Alex wanted to mark his Coming of Age. Smoke a cigar with his dad. Praise God for his fun-loving dad. Dave called a friend, another dad of an eighteen year old, and they met at a local pub to shoot pool and watch the boys smoke a cigar. (Don't comment how gross and unhealthy this is...I know...but I am struck by the significance of wanting to Mark Time and, get this, WANTING YOUR DAD TO COME WITH YOU!).

I held my breath when prodding Alex for a birthday wish list this year. Phew! He did still want some game system games. I already dread the day that the games are put away and all he wants is a business suit or help paying his mortgage. I still see my child in this new adult, but he's fading. He's becoming more manly every day.

Yet I rejoice. I rejoice that we have now seen one child cross the invisible, societal barrier from child to adult. He is strong, smart and capable. He is planning a future that doesn't revolve around home. He is leading the way with his sibilings right behind him. I am proud of him.

Except the part about the cigar.