Adulthood, one bowl of pasta at a time

While making spaghetti sauce this evening (Bolognese-ish style), I suddenly found myself remembering one of those days when it had hit me that I was turning into an adult. I don't ever feel entirely like an adult, but I have moments where I have the sudden realization that I am not a child. Oh, I know that, all the time, and go about my day, but it's the sort of knowledge that resides in the back of my mind.

The day I remembered was an afternoon in late autumn when I was in my third year of undergrad. I was hanging out and doing homework in the common area of my boyfriend's dorm. At that time, he lived in a dorm with a big shared kitchen, and it was always fun to camp out and watch the guys he lived with figuring out how to cook edible food. While it wasn't a new skill for many of them, some of them got more than a little creative in their efforts. We kept wondering if the guy who literally lived on meat and potatoes, no salt, would develop a vitamin deficiency. J.'s roommate seemed to mostly subsist on instant kimchi noodles. And J. himself was a big fan of orange juice smoothies. Made mostly with a can of orange juice concentrate and very little else.

Anyway, that day, J. was still in class and I was doing homework, and one of our mutual friends was making spaghetti. He could definitely cook, and cook well, but he preferred non-Western food. This was his first time making a spaghetti (Bolognese) sauce. He called me over to taste it. He felt like something was missing but didn't know what. "Needs more oregano," I said, almost without thought, after tasting the sauce. So he added more oregano and went on with his dinner preparation.

I remember the moment because I then noticed I had become someone who could figure out what a sauce was missing, a skill I had mostly attributed to adults. And all of sudden, I was one of them.

My current version of spaghetti, which includes carrots, cheese, and pork.

Adulthood, in my experience, is something that comes in small experiences which add up to a large whole. It doesn't happen instantly, overnight. It's a process. It doesn't mean I have to act like the token grownup 24/7, but it does mean that those responsibilities of adulthood, of being the grownup, become more familiar every day. Sometimes it means that I floss my teeth every day, whether I want to or not, as an example to my daughter and to avoid massive dental bills in the future, and sometimes I means I can tell when a sauce needs another spoonful of oregano.