冠礼?

It's a bit weird. Having just Googled it, the 冠礼 ("Guan Li"), or idea of coming of age in Chinese Confucian culture, occurs when one turns twenty. What's weird is that my parents have always said from a young age that that date would be on the day that I turned twelve. Or fourteen. I don't remember and it really doesn't matter. What matters in perspective is that based on what they had said, I'd be an adult.

I’m not sure the reasoning behind the six or eight year disparity in when one comes of age. Maybe they weren’t following the Confucian aspect of Chinese culture there – in my family, the culture is essentially a soup with bits of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Americanism stirred together and served in a bowl with chopsticks or a spoon, you choose.

Or maybe my parents wanted me to grow up faster. To mature quickly so that I could take care of myself and my younger brother more quickly. Living in a middle class household where my dad makes an above average amount of money, I cannot say we are not well off. But with my dad getting on in years in proximity to the standard age of retirement and neither my brother nor I having gone through college (let alone potentially medical school), my mom even took up a job to help sustain for the future.

The moral of the tangent is that when neither of my parents were home for reasons x or y, I was de facto in charge of the house. I was to make sure nothing bad happened to or because of my brother or me (even if my mom would call every so often to tell me to prepare something or to do a task).

I think that little anecdote shows that there was not really one set event or moment that marked my transition into adulthood. I see it more as parallel to the biological punctuated equilibrium theory in which sudden spurts of evolution occur during an otherwise stable environment. In this comparison, my maturity would be likened to these evolutionary change spurts. From my experience, my growing mentally as I come more and more of age can be summed in that exact phrase: “more and more.” There have been little events that have gradually shifted me towards adulthood.

Like when my family went to China three summers ago. With my dad having to go to other places for his business trip with his company, my mom, brother, and I went to Beijing. Technically, I was the male of the house for those few days. And although that meant less than it sounds like, and rightfully so, I was still expected to watch my brother to make sure he didn’t wander off or anything and to help my mom make judgment calls so that when she started feeling as if she had to throw up from what must have been bad seafood, we could figure out what to do.

It’s the little things like getting three texts on the night that I was in Syracuse for the NYSML math competition compared to three plus three times three calls during the school field trips to Boston and Washington in middle school.

In Chinese culture, there’s no event similar to a Bar Mitzvah in which one crosses the line from boy to man. But who knows? Maybe by the time my “Guan Li” has passed, there will be one big moment that marks my transition into adulthood. Or maybe not. Maybe by the time I’m twenty, little events here and there will have turned me fully into an adult. Who knows?