Thirteen is a childhood milestone — an age that, for some young people, marks a beginning or ushers in a tradition.
Jewish children, for example, celebrate a bar or bat mitzvah. Many Roman Catholic children receive the sacrament of confirmation.
At the Imwalle household in Hilliard, the milestone carries a new responsibility: cleaning a bathroom.
With 10 children, including six still at home, my wife, Lisa, and I view self-sufficient offspring as a necessity.
Which explains why, by age 3, our children have learned to put their dirty clothes in a hamper and clear their dirty plates from the table.
Such training also helps each Saturday, popularly (or maybe not so popularly) known as “job day.”