There are a lot of things I don’t give my beans. Frozen food (other than ice cream, of course),
cereal that turns your milk different colors, gum (I have a recurring nightmare
about gum getting stuck in thick, little girl hair), and their own way when one
or the other of them is having a fit.
There are also a lot of things I do give my kids. An excessive amount of hugs and kisses, a rear-end
tightening when needed, and pancakes on Sunday mornings. They know they’re
loved. They know they’re special. And I don’t mean special in that “you’re
better than someone else” kind of way that seems to pervade our society these
days. But special in the “you’re you and nobody else is the same you as you”
kind of way that I believe every kid needs to hear and believe. That every kid
deserves to hear and believe.
Which brings me to the thing I can’t give my kids. Something
that I had. Something that is not necessarily vital, but I’d argue that is
invaluable. And my inability to provide this to my beans niggles away in the
back of my mind like a jagged fingernail. Not painful, not something I think
about all the time, but it’s there waiting to be noticed. Waiting to catch on
something.
A few weeks ago, my brother was ordained into the
priesthood. Family members came to North Carolina from Michigan to support him
and celebrate. My aunt was one of those family members. Watching her with my
kids was incredibly heart-warming. She’s a warm, generous person, easy to love
and even easier to be loved by. She’d never met two of my beans and hadn’t seen
The Professor since he was baby. All three kids basked in her love and
attention. It warmed my heart and made it ache all at once.
When I was growing up, this same aunt (my mom’s older
sister) always made me feel special. She didn’t do BIG things. Rather, she let me
know in dozens of little ways that she loved me. That I mattered. I think aunts
have the ability to do this in a way no one else can.
I was a picky eater. Okay, I still am. I am almost
43-years-old and I still hate green vegetables. I am also VERY weird about
certain textures. The mere thought of orange juice with pulp makes me retch.
There. I said it. J
So you can see that being my mother had its challenging moments where food was
concerned.
Food was – and is – a big thing in our family. It was the
center of our holiday celebrations. You never left a family gathering hungry.
Rather, it was far more common to feel a little uncomfortably stuffed – full of
home-baked goods and meals prepared with love and a great deal of skill. Yum. One
of the offerings was always a jello salad (I have no idea why, looking back it’s
the one thing that seems incongruous). If my mom made the jello salad, it was
always chock full of pieces of fruit and sometimes even nuts for crunch. Now, a
quick reference to the previous paragraph and my feelings about food textures
should tell you how I felt about these salads. Simply writing about it just
gave me the shivers. J
When my mom hosted these dinners, I passed the jello along
to the next person without taking any. But if my aunt hosted, it was different.
I still passed the chunky jello salad, but I knew that my aunt would step into
her kitchen and come back with a mini jello salad just for me. A bowl of
gloriously plain, smooth, non-chunky or crunchy jello. My mom would roll her
eyes and tell my aunt she was spoiling me. My aunt would ignore her and give me
a kiss on the head.
The jello isn’t actually the point of this story. It was
what the jello represented. It said I was worth the fuss. I was thought of. My
aunt loved me enough to do little things – a hundred little things – just for
me. Aunts have the ability to “spoil” without actually spoiling. Moms have to
say no – and should say no – to things every day. Aunts get to say yes. Aunts
make us feel special.
This brings me back to what I can’t give my kids. Our family
is small. As I mentioned, my brother – my only sibling – became a priest. A
Catholic priest who will never marry or have children. My husband’s brother –
and only sibling – is deceased. My kids have two sets of grandparents and an
uncle. It’s a pretty small bunch J
They are loved. Oh, how they’re loved by us all, small in number though we may
be. But they miss out on that special brand of love that only aunts can give.
So if at times I turn myself inside-out and upside-down to
do little extra things to make my beans feel special, it’s because I’m trying
to be their aunt as well as their mommy. Trying to give them that big feeling
of being loved and that little feeling of being fussed over just because. Just
because they’re who they are.
If your kids have what I call an aunt with a capital “A” or
if you are such an aunt, take a minute to be thankful. Thankful for that
special relationship that you’ve been given. Thankful for that very special
brand of love that’s as close to mother love as you can get with a splash of
friendship thrown in for good measure.
