"Coming of age" is one of literature's great story lines because it's something all of us do. I suppose I could say, "have to" do, because nobody stays a child. If we do, we're easily put away.
Certain stories, told at Sunday dinner, used to create a moment of silence. At those moments, my mother-in-law would wait for maybe fifteen seconds, then do her part to fill the void: "It's not what you want in life, it's what you get," she'd say with a heft that was almost biblical in resonance. You "come of age" when you accept the truth of that little axiom, and just about all of us do.
Here's a take--"The Prince" by Leo Dangel.
Charlene walks through the grove,
picking daisies. She sits,
leaning against a cottonwood tree,
weaves herself a flower crown,
closes her eyes, and dreams
of Robert Redford on a horse
come to take her away.
Like so many Leo Dangel poems, this one is set on a farm. The cottonwood suggests the Midwest somewhere, but it needn't be. There are no bibs or pitchforks; this is nothing out of Grant Wood. The child in Charlene simply fancies a dream that isn't likely to happen. It's a simple dream, all too human.
Here's the second half.
Charlene wakes to a clattering engine.
It's Marvin Ackerman, the neighbor boy,
on a John Deere tractor,
cultivating corn. Marvin grins
and waves wildly. He will probably ask
her out again. She is thinking
she might as well say yes.
Charlene is "coming of age."
If you feel sad for Marvin Ackerman, don't. The two of them will work it out.
I remember reading somewhere that versions of our "coming of age" stories are the only stories we tell, the only novels we write, the only tales we truly and deeply experience, the only stories worth telling.
I'm old enough to understand that the word only, often as not, draws lines in the sand that aren't really there. Understanding that, too, is "coming of age," as true-to-life as a rumbling John Deere.
(And now silence for maybe fifteen seconds.)
"It's not what you want, it's what you get."
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