Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

April 14, 2007

Wonders of the Orient

A Kun (Jastine) Leng Column

Suddenly I’m the Adult

 Jastine Leng

This summer my family gathered on a seaside village for a weekend. My parents were there, my three little cousins, and me. We ate at one of those restaurants where the menu is scrawled on a blackboard held by a chummy waiter and had a wonderful time. With dinner concluded, the waiter set the check down in the middle of the table. That’s when it happened. My mother did not reach for the check.

In fact, my mother did nothing. Conversation continued. Finally it dawned on me. Me! I was supposed to pick up the check. After all these years, after hundreds of restaurant meals with my parents, after a lifetime of thinking of my mother as the one with the bills, it had all changed. I reached for the check and whipped out my China Construction Bank card. My view of myself was suddenly altered. With a stroke of the pen, I was suddenly an adult.

Some people mark off their life in years, others in events. I am one of the latter, and I think of some events as rites of passage. I did not become a young woman at a particular year like 13, but when a kid strolled into the store where I worked and called me “ Madam”. I turned around to see whom he was calling. He repeated it several times—“Madam, madam”—looking straight at me. The realization hit like a punch: Me! He was talking to me. I was suddenly a madam.

There have been other milestones. The cops of my youth always seemed too big, even huge, and of course they were older than I was. Then one day they were neither. In fact, some of them were kids—short kids at that. Another milestone.

That day comes when you suddenly realize that all the badminton players in the game you’re watching are younger than you. Instead of being big women, they are merely big kids. With that milestone goes that fantasy that someday, maybe you too could be a player—maybe not a badminton player but certainly a baseball player. I had good eyes as a kid—not much power, but keen eyes—and I always thought I could play the game. One day I realized that I couldn’t. Without having ever reached the hill, I was over it.

For some people, the most momentous milestone is the death of a parent. This happened recently to a friend of mine. With the burial of his father came the realization that he had moved up a notch. Of course, he had known all along that this would happen, but until the funeral, the knowledge seemed theoretical at best. As long as one of your parents is alive, you stay in some way a kid. At the very least, there remains at least one person whose love is unconditional.

For women, a milestone is reached when they can no longer have children. The loss of a life, the inability to create one—they are variations on the same theme. For a childless woman who could control everything in life but the clock, this milestone is a cruel one indeed.

I count other, less serious milestones—like being discovered to have broken something. As the house-owner caught it was I, the culprit that had broken his windows, I sat there pretending that really responsible for penalties was for adults. I, of course, was still a kid. The owner was buying none of it. I was an independent person, an adult. She all but said, Go to the court.

There have been others. I remember the day when I had a ferocious augment with my father and realized that I could no longer shout at him. He was too small and the days when he could just pick me up and take me to my room-isolation cell were over. I needed not to shout, but to persuade and reason. He was suddenly, rapidly, older. The conclusion was inescapable: So was I. 

One day you go to your friends’ weddings. One day you celebrate the birth of their kids. One day you see one of their kids driving, and one day those kids have kids of their own. One day you meet at parties and then at weddings and then at funerals. It all happens in one day. Take my word for it.

I never thought I would fall asleep in front of the television set as my mother did, and as my friends’ mothers did, too. I remember my parents and their friends talking about insomnia and they sounded like members of a different species. Not able to sleep? How ridiculous! Once it was all I did. Once it was what I did best.

I never thought that I would eat a food that did not agree with me. Now I meet them all the time. I thought I would never go to the beach and not swim. I spent all of August at the beach and never once went into the ocean. I never thought I would appreciate opera, but now the pathos, the schmaltz and, especially, the combination of voice and music appeal to me.

I never thought I would prefer to stay at home instead of going to a party, but now I find myself passing parties up. I used to think that people who watched birds were weird, but this summer I found myself watching them, and maybe I’ll get a book on the subject. I yearn for a religious conviction I never thought I’d want; I now exult in my heritage anyway and feel close to ancestors long gone, and I echo my mother in arguments, I still lose.

One day I made a good toast. One day I handled a headwaiter. One day I bought a sofa. One day—what a day!—I became an adult, and not too long after that I picked up the check for my own. I thought then and there it was a rite of passage for me. Not until I got older did I realize that it was one for her, too. Another milestone.

I'm gonna post more articles on Gather now. Please check out later if you like them.

Thank you very much!

Jastine Leng

ghoul_pink_fantasy@yahoo.com

Oh, please, God, let them remember me now !

 http://www.lulu.com/roseleng

Feather of New Year:  http://www.lulu.com/content/538412