Waaaaaaaaaay back on March 19th (2023), we had a Coming of Age Ceremony for Berkeley.
Robyn for the longest time has looked longingly at the Jewish traditions of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. And in general has had a strong sense that she wanted to honor our children's transition from children to adolescents. Having no such traditions to appeal to in our family heritages we had to look else where. But we had to look else where with an eye toward not appropriating other people's traditional ceremonies.
After much internet querying, and ruling out having Berkeley kill a lion with her bearbare hands, Andrea Manning entered our lives. As I'm sure no one who has been on the internet in the last ten years will be surprised by, we rediscovered you can find pretty much anything there, even a person who specializes in creating coming of age ceremonies with out appropriating other cultures.
We spent multiple months meeting with Andrea, coming up with ideas, scratching ideas, asking favors of many of our friends, second guessing our ideas, feeling like we didn't know what we were doing because we were kind of making up a holiday for ourselves, crafting, gaining a mentor, feeling altogether overwhelmed with last minute planning, and eliciting Berkeley's tepid cooperation.
Why would her cooperation be tepid you wonder? Well, one of our main motivations for the celebrations was that our kids never do anything hard in comparison to a lot of other people in the world. They have it pretty nice. At a high level the celebration would start with speaking of Berkeley's strengths, then a separation that included her doing something challenging, and then her return where we would acknowledge her as a transformed person, but not just her, but the entire family. As she changes to adolescents so must our parenting, and so must her interactions with her sisters. And her community. But the important part was that hard bit in the middle. We settled on her walking the full length of Golden Gate Park and back on her own, approximately six miles. She was not excited for this.
We mapped out the route, we practiced small parts of it, I walked the entire thing with her one day, her and Robyn road bikes along the entire route another day. But it's a lot of walking and she hates going out and doing things alone. Which is exactly why we chose this task over others.
As an aside, she accused me of never doing hard things myself one day, when I had asked her to go pick up some milk from the corner store. I disagreed and told her I do hard things all the time. "Like what?" she inquired. "Like go to the grocery store to get milk." It was funny, I thought, but she rolled her eyes and didn't buy it, and to be fair she had a point. So to stretch myself a little as well, I volunteered to do something hard before she did her quest. I went to an open mic and read a poem on wrote for valentine's day. I made her come with me so she could see how terrified I was. I think still she felt it was a bigger torture for her than me to have to come along.
Back to the ceremony. I preparation we thought about and listed Berkeley's strengths. Andrea asked us to watch her and real see her. It was a fun task. With those strengths we created a driftwood windchime from the wood scavenged from the beach and dunes she has spent her childhood playing in just down the street. We painted each strength into a separate piece of wood.
We also looked at our own family values, again naming them and thinking upon them and how they might shape our ceremony.
We asked our dear friend Maliya to be a mentor for Berkeley. As part of that mentorship they got together once a week and explored the park, made healing salves, identified plants, painted rocks to represent our family values and hopefully generally bonded. The mentorship was not only a chance for her to grow, and for us to grow closer to Maliya, but represented the fact that we, as her parents, are not the only grownups she can look to for help, advice, and love. In some ways Maliya was a symbolic stand in for all the adults in her life. Later Maliya also agreed to be our master of ceremony. The event could not have happened without her.
Berkeley also, on her own, animated a cute video that matched the family value rocks. Hopefully I can figure out how to get it from the ipad to this blog post.
We came up with a parent ceremony for the day as well. We sent out thousands of emails to friends and family on coordinating. We picked a choice spot in the park to mark the start and end of her hike and to contain our celebration. It came complete with an archway for her to passthrough and everything. AND we didn't find a single needle in the process.
Preparing for the ceremony stretched and strengthened Robyn's and my relationship as we navigated the main friction in our relationship: she's a perfectionist and I'm a good enough-ist.
We watched the weather with anxiety as the day approached because we had picked the date months before and didn't think at the time that we would be in the middle of a year were it seemed like half of the trees in San Francisco fell down due to so much rain. Every day the odds of rain grew more and more. We thought about calling the whole thing off the night before, but we did not.
The morning of it drizzled. We packed all of our ceremony stuff up into the car and headed into the park. The rain offered a nice ambiance and was not too heavy and by time Berkeley headed off on her hike she did so without rain accompanying her.
A few friends showed up early to help us set up. Then a few more showed up for the first part of the ceremony. We started with a land acknowledgement and recognized that no ceremony like this, because it's very conception is steeped in native history, could be fully achieved without some nod to a past that is not fully ours. Everyone there offered a word about what the park represented to them. It's a list we could not capture but was full as inspiration from "childhood" and "freedom" to "serenity" and "appreciation". Robyn and I then presented why we were doing this (already covered above).
Maliya addressed the importance of community, especially in the wake of COVID. While the ceremony was for our family, Maliya's words were inspired and suggested that we all, our community needed this as well, that we need more opportunities to come together in such moments after spending so much time secluded since 2020. And we acknowledge those in our community who could not be there, either due to death or distance.
We spoke of the mentorship and the bond that has grown between Berkely and Maliya. We spoke of our family values so that Berkeley might remember them on her journey away from us. Our other good friend Liesel offered a visualization/meditation of a childhood transition.
And finally we covered Berkeley's strengths. Listing them one by one and speaking to how they manifest in her, again so that she might remember them on her time away. So that she might know that she is capable and that we see her. Then we packed her bag full of love in the form of a letter from us, food, warm clothes, a tracking app, something to read, and she was off on her journey alone for the next 2 hours.
Robyn and I then snuck off to our parent ceremony, where we spoke of our strengths and challenges, remembrances and anticipations. And ate a bit of chocolate.
During that time the remainder of community showed up. We chatted, hugged, and awaited Berkeley's return. Kids ran wild. Streamers and wands were made. And as the minute approached, we lined ourselves up along your return route. The idea was to let her return to us and pause under the archway, but her friends could not be contained and they mopped her well before the appointed spot. It was quite lovely, even if against plan. We also played a little ditty over a speaker as she returned, something we chose special for her: Wildflowers by Trampled by Turtles (yes, we know it's not the original but it's the one she loves).
After everyone had their turn to congratulate her and hug her we again gathered the larger group together and talked a little bit about what we had done in the morning. Jason shared a wonderful true story about his own childhood transition that happened around Berkeley's age when I moved away from Indianapolis. He spoke of how hard that transition was, but also the fruits that it bore in the end, fruits such as Robyn and my marriage, and the eventual birth of the child we all were celebrating that day.
As a last step we presented Berkeley with a new privilege and responsibility. We gave her the responsibility to get herself around the neighborhood by herself and the privilege to do so on our newish e-bike. We also presented her with a key to our house as a simple of both the freedom to move about and as a sign of our trusting her with our safety.
We thanked Maliya and then it was on to eating! And eventually cleaning up and going home.
If there is anything worth reproducing here it's Berkeley's list of strengths.
Patient
with animals
with her sisters {most of the time 🙂} Sometimes I hear her listening to her sisters in a way that I think is kinda rare for kids her age
with her parents.
Artistic
especially with drawing and animating. If you've spent more than 20 minutes with her, she's probably drawn a dragon on some piece of your property.
Creative
when role playing with Lucette
using her imagination when coming up with games with friends- Pubic Store with Bird!
crazy ideas when playing D&D
Curious
She finds so many subjects interesting and wants to engage with them-- technology, music, reptiles, school, plants, building, creating, life!
It makes it super fun to be her parent
Strong Reader
could legit read all day without taking a break! even to pee! (That's a whole other strength!)
Musical
both listening to and playing it!
We've had a string of piano teacher losses, but all of them have loved teaching B because she has so much fun with it.
Adaptable
she’s able to be friends with so many different people, even those who don’t necessarily get along with each other,
she easily switches from Lizzo to the Avett Brothers
Slow to Judge
she’s able to be thoughtful about why someone might act a certain way and not be judgemental about it.
Silly
her ability to be goofy allows her to have fun with almost anything she’s doing, even when it's something she's not excited about doing.
she doesn’t take herself too seriously.
she's able to bring other people out of their shell with her ease and goofy-ness.
she’s always down to wrestle, and willing to look bizarre.
Helpful
she rarely complains when we ask her to do stuff, and we ask her a lot.
her teachers like having her in their class because she is generally quick to get on board with whatever is being asked.
she's just easy to spend time with because she's agreeable, and in a family that's super helpful.
Observant
esp. of nature- she can watch animals for a really long time.
Getting Dirty/Messy
I’m hesitant to include this as a “strength” but it is true she’s very good at it. And it’s a thing not everyone is willing to do.
Funny!
she has a great sense of humor and can laugh at herself too
Animal Whisperer
she has a way with animals/creatures
she once stood in grandpa Chuck's field with her hand out to a cow for an hour before it let her touch it because Grandpa said the cows wouldn't let her.
Opposite of a perfectionist .
she experiments and makes progress even when things are imperfect
Reliable
Her collaborator Sam said he always feels safe having his expensive camera equipment in her care and puts her in charge in making sure it returns to the classroom.
Open
To trying new things, new foods
Unflappable
Things just don't phase Berkeley the way they would a lot of others. Even when she's disappointed by something, she kinda just rolls with it.
A word her preschool teacher used to describe her that still feels accurate
Focused
when interested she can focus for hours: reading, animating, Swimming (Robyn gets so bored swimming laps over and over.)
