When, exactly, did you become an adult?

I was looking for something else on my blog when I came across an old post from January 20, 2012.  It made me laugh, so I'm sharing it again.  Hmm, I just noticed that Beth Kephart, the author, was the first to comment that day:

"Wow. what a story you have lived, Bonnie.  It seems to me there is the stuff of a book here!"

Throwback Thursday

Beth Kephart asked in her post today, "When, exactly, did you become an adult?"  Funny she should ask, I thought, as I dashed out the door before even reading beyond her title, which appears on the sidebar here, under "Blogs I read."  I had places to go and people to see, but now I'm home and have looked up what I wrote in 2006 about becoming an adult.  At the time, I was sixty-six years old, having been born in 1940.  (That's important to know when I mention 1960, okay?)  After reading this, you won't be surprised to hear that I still occasionally wonder what I want to be when I grow up.

Bits of Bonnie

When I started thinking about "becoming an adult," it seemed to me the first thing to consider was what makes a person an adult.  Once there were initiations to pass, as when a boy joined the men on a hunt and killed his first "food."   Once, a girl was considered an adult when she began to menstruate and could have children.  I had my first period when I was twelve; did that make me an adult?  I don't think so!

I married at eighteen; did that make me an adult? Apparently not. When we bought a house in early 1960, I was nineteen and my husband was twenty-five.  He could sign the papers, but I could not ... because I was a minor.  At that time the legal age was twenty-one, but that has fluctuated in my lifetime.  Anyway, I had to go before a judge to get my "minority" removed.  Then I could sign legal papers and be co-owner of our first house.

Did owning a house make me an adult?  Apparently not.  I couldn't vote in the 1960 election between Nixon and Kennedy ... or at least I assumed I couldn't vote ... because I was only twenty.  A few years ago it occurred to me that maybe I could have voted after all, since officially my minority had been removed earlier that same year and I was "legally" an adult.  But I didn't think of that until about 45 years too late.

When I was twenty, my twins were born; did that make me an adult?  When people asked me how I managed, I would tell them, "I didn't know what to do with ONE, and I got TWO."

My father died in a traffic accident when I was twenty-four, and my widowed mother was in shock; so my 21-year-old brother and I had to arrange the funeral.  Did that make me an adult?

Somehow, things keep happening and we keep going, doing whatever is necessary to cope.  Maybe I became an adult at the point I was able to put the pieces together sufficiently to be able to say with confidence that I now knew my own mind and could give a satisfactory answer to the meaning of my life.  If so (I wrote in late 2006), I became an adult only four or five years ago in my early sixties!  And THAT, dear heart, is why my email is "emerging.paradigm" ... because I am emerging into my new way of being.

Am I an adult now?  Maybe it depends on the day.  Some days I feel like I'm in my second childhood.

Okay, it's your turn to ask yourself, "When did YOU become an adult?"