Aunt

In just over six months, I'm going to become an aunt. Peanut will arrive on the scene and I will have the responsibility of loving, and perhaps slightly spoiling, the newest and smallest member of our family. I'm excited, and a little worried. Being an aunt, after all, is a big responsibility. After all, I have wonderful aunts, and I want to live up to their example.

When I was little, I thought my aunts were just about the coolest people in the world. My parents seemed a bit stodgy (as the ones with disciplinary responsibility for me, they sort of had to be) but my aunts were COOL.

Aunt L lived in a city far away, so I seldom got to see her. But when I did, it was always a blast. She knew fun games and always seemed to be laughing and joking. My first solo plane trip was to see her side of the family, and she made me feel quite grown up. She taught me to play Confusion and took me to get my first make-up. She would take me shopping in the big city and I would get to pick out clothes that were bright and trendy. She worked for the Girls Scouts, and always had fun projects and neat bits of trivia to share. She was one of the first people to help me see that I could be smart, creative, strong, and feminine at the same time.

Aunt M lived closer, so I got to see her every Christmas. She, too, lived in a big city, and seemed to me to be extremely sophisticated. As I got older, many of my tastes coincided with hers. We shared a love for travel, jazz, good food, mystery novels, and great old movies. She introduced me to Miles Davis, Thai food, France, and Katherine Hepburn. When I visited her, she took me to the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, which is still one of the coolest sporting events I've ever seen live. When I discovered politics, she was the one person in the family who saw the world like I did, and she helped me to navigate the difficult waters of being a political minority in a very opinionated family. When I moved to go to seminary in the city where she lives, we became even closer. She taught me to enjoy cooking while we watched movies and sporting events together. We cheered our respective teams (Florida and Mizzou) to victory on the football field and basketball court while sauteing, boiling, and baking delicious meals. She even took me to amazing art exhibits and lent me novels to keep me sane during tough parts of the semester. I'm going to miss her terribly when, in a few months, we're no longer in the same city and I only get to see her a few times a year.

In light of these fantastic women who have been so important to me, I know that being an aunt is a very important role. I might be the one to introduce Peanut to Thai food, teach him to cook, or explain to her about the West Coast offense. I might take her for her first makeover or advise him before his first date. Maybe I'll just be a loving, applauding presence at a graduation, performance, or sporting event. I hope I'm up to the responsibility; I want to be like my aunts.