21 – A Great Number To See
If you have ever sat at a Blackjack table in a casino, having an “ace” and a “face card” or your cards totaling twenty-one is considered a victory. Many times you can beat the dealer with less than twenty-one, such as with eighteen, or even on rare occasions, sixteen. In life, these numbers; sixteen, eighteen, and twenty-one carry their own sort of victories. I now have a daughter who has hit “blackjack” in life, turning twenty-one years of age. Though we recognize adults at the age of eighteen being given rights such as the right to vote and use credit cards, there is still a tendency to look at our young adults, still as kids. But once turning twenty-one, it is official. While I often find myself referring to young adults in the early twenties as “kids,” they are adults. And now, I am officially the Dad of a twenty-one year-old adult.
Officially, my daughter no longer has any restrictions because of her age. She is able to legally do anything she chooses whether going to a casino, dancing at a club, or buying alcohol. With her youthful appearance, it is going to be decades of being “carded,” required to show identification to prove legal age status.
My daughter, in her twenty-one years of life has faced so many challenges already, all the while forming who she is to become. Being adopted, the biggest event in her life, she had no say in, uprooted from one world, placed into another. Being her adoptive parents, we are the only parents she has ever known. And 75% of her life she has been witness to one health crisis after another involving me. Finally, dealing with her parents divorce was challenging I am sure.
All the while, I wanted school to be a priority for her, along with making character and reputation pillars in her life. She grew with an empathy and determination mirroring how I was raised. Admittedly, she was a better student than I was and as she nears the end of her second year of college, she now has her pathway into what she will do as an adult in her sights.
There was no party today for her, at least with her family, as she is overseas. Ironically, this is the second birthday that she is out of the country, the first time, as she was adopted, though I did get to at least celebrate her first birthday with her, this time, she was on her own. But she was surrounded by her friends today for a fun night out for dinner. As grown-ups, we often put so much into birthday parties for our kids, making them super-events, competing with other parents, to make sure we live up to standards. When in reality, I do not think I ever saw my daughter having as great a time on her birthday, than the photos sent to me today.
Birthdays will now just become an annual cycle. I do hope that she does not develop that avoidance thing that comes turning into the next decade. There is no more mystery or challenge with getting away with anything, because she is now of legal age for everything.
But as I found myself, as I often do, going through old photos over the last few weeks, looking at my twenty-one year-old daughter, she is still the same daughter placed in my arms, that I watched grow, year after year after year. What a thrill it has been.
Paul's Heart 