THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 28, 1996 TAG: 9609280089
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: The Rites of Passage: A Celebration of Life, from Birth to old
age, in words and pictures, in seven parts
Part I
SOURCE: BY DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 56 lines
LIE ON YOUR BACK some night and count the stars. Bright little points, some flaring, some pale.
Now, in between them, count the dark. These are the passages from point to point, and the ways are many.
We spend our whole lives in passage from one point to another.
The journey begins before childhood, with a dark passage through a mother's birth canal. We are led, sometimes carefully, sometimes not, to learn by example the fundamentals of life: how to walk, how to talk, how to fall and cry and get up again.
It can be frightening, this early childhood. Remember? Eye level for a toddler means looking straight into Dad's knees. Kindergarten can feel like abandonment.
But also comes emancipation. . . and passage. Taking off the training wheels. Lowering the baby gate. Reading a first word. Losing a front tooth.
The journey begins.
Somewhere, sometime today, a child took his first steps. A preschooler fell off his first bike. A college freshman moved away from home. A college graduate moved back in.
On any given day in Hampton Roads, people marry and people divorce. Mortgages are signed, toddlers go to day care. Children become their parents, parents become childlike.
Some passages we celebrate with ritual: birthdays, funerals, marriage, divorce, graduation, retirement. Others are personal milestones only: first date, first job, first car, first house, first child, last day on the job.
For the next seven Saturdays, The Virginian-Pilot will celebrate in pictures and words the universal passages that take each of us through life.
``In our beginnings lie our journey's end,'' says writer Kofi Awoonor of Ghana.
To some eyes, we begin aging the instant we are born. To others, we improve with each passing moment. The viewpoint depends on whether you count the stars, or the dark.
Age carries us along, whether we will or no. At each stage, we enter as novices, and pass on by virtue of time.
Pass. Age.
Passage. ILLUSTRATION: Photos by Martin Smith Rodden\The Virginian-Pilot
A New Life Begins
The Baptism
First Day of School
Balancing Act
[For the complete text of cutlines of these photos, see microfilm.] by CNB