Auntie Jenn

I have one nephew and two nieces and as each of these sweet souls came into my life, so did these odd feelings of excitement, worry, hope, sadness (knowing lengthy periods of time would go between visits and snuggles), and supreme happiness. I see the fragile innocence of family, these precious young years and this time that is to savor. My heart often aches because I can't be the aunt like the ones I had growing up. So much time is lost between visits and faces are ever changing along with new milestones taking place in these beautiful little lifes.

I want them to remember me, but I do know it is I who will keep this chronicle for them. I want them to remember being tucked tight in my lap unable to escape over whelming snuggles, how badly they wanted to be big and how badly we wanted them to stay small. I want them to remember rolling in the backyard grass and asking all the while if I was watching, listening, and if I wanted to come play too? I want us all to remember the sounds of the full, busy house: endless showers, slamming doors, laundry ever-churning, scuffed carpets, giggles and secrets, while we sit and marvel and love and wonder. I want desperately to know my place-and our conclusion. Maybe that is a struggle I will wrestle all my life.

As an Aunt, I understand this, because I am witnessing these children in ways that maybe I don't always witness my very own. I see their perfection (and their flaws) through a loving and devoted but distant lens. I can nurture and scold and teach and play, but the time is finite. Every last minute counts, because at the day's end, that child isn't mine. I have to give them over but I do so knowing that I have loved every last inch of them from their tiny little eyebrows to their wiggley toes. What else as an Auntie, am I do to? Maybe that is the role of an Aunt, playing along but not necessarily leading the way.

I can be the Auntie that buys little surprises and stickers books and bags of Starbursts. Who can show a little more leniency than the disciplinarian parents, who is silly and child like too. Who never tires of knock-knock jokes or stories about school, or playing Legos, or making the grass and sky and trees any color I please across dozens of coloring book pages. Who loves earnestly, who is proud, who will remember all the early years, yes being that Auntie is just fine with me. Someday I will tell them all about who they were then, I will tell them their stories.