Coming through the door, I stalled, disoriented by the scene.

I was at once acutely proud but also stricken with dread. Here we were in the foyer of Services SA — a bland government office, all beige, take a number, credit card or cash, Sir? — and outside it was Saturday morning.

Our agenda was motoring.

Frozen in the doorway I stared again. Alex and Max were hunched over a wooden bench, both six foot two and affable with easy nature and blond foppishness. There was an orderly murmuring across the bureaucratic space: productive snippets of dialogue, folks taking care of business, transactions underway.

Max was completing his form. ‘What’re block letters, Dad?’ I told him and with his respectful and deliberate writing he continued. At his right shoulder Alex worked through his paperwork with that same Labrador eagerness he’s carried since he was small.

I flipped between encouraging words and my thrumming denial that we’d arrived at this place. My boys were here, and while the scene felt familiar — like a re-run of an old TV episode — it was also unknowable. Alex and Max were buzzing with laconic excitement — I was happy but forlorn at how time had brutally evaporated.

Documents finished, we took our queue numbers from the cheerful staff and claimed our seats. A large screen tracked our progress, blinking along with robotic announcements: ‘C45.’ Five minutes later, ‘C46.’

It was much too early and much too late.

Waiting, we cycled through topics of interest: the boys’ work, school for Max, their friends.

All the while my internal commentary ran: Have I done my job here? Is now the time for moral instruction about their responsibilities, soon to descend like netting? Or do I just tell them to check their blind spots?

Pushing through the doors into the dazzling light, we eased across the car park. Both towered over me in their gentle ways. Max held his papers in his hand. His phone app was now loaded. He would soon learn to drive.

Alex’s car was waiting for us. He’d already swapped his L plates for P plates. He was on the road. They were, again, with these welcome and unstoppable advances, on their way. We had all become older.

Alex drove the three of us back to Glenelg. ‘Thanks, Dad,’ hung in the car’s interior. Their worlds had just expanded to a new, adult horizon. Mine had become, somehow, smaller.