Aunts Get To Cry At Graduations, Too

I loved you the moment I put my hand on your mother’s stomach (the first pregnant belly I had ever touched) and felt one of your fetal appendages complain against my palm. Like you couldn’t wait another second to get out of that watery echo chamber and start your life. And as the whole of our strange blended, extended family paced the waiting room of the maternity wing, nervously eyeing each other and the balloons, stuffed animals and various offerings we’d brought, I couldn’t wait to meet you. The first grandchild on all sides, the first nephew, the first son. Your father, my brother, in scrubs from head to toe, dashed out from time to time, dripping fret from his eyes, giving us updates. The labor was long and difficult and finally – with your father looking about twenty years older than he was a mere twenty minutes earlier – he came to tell us the doctor was going to cut you out.

“He’s got a Mohawk,” your uncle and I snickered to each other, when we were allowed our first look at you. Sorry, dude, but you looked so funny, with your black hair sticking straight up at the top of your head. Your eyes, topped with a baby unibrow, were huge and searching, and your face had this calm placidity, as if you’d been here a few times before. “An old soul,” we called you. You just seemed so comfortable with this world, with us, although you did have your questions. Or perhaps, early on, it was simply a language barrier. When your mother brought you by our apartment (a nice bumpy stroller ride from your house), you stared at objects in abject wonderment.

“Dot,” you’d say, pointing to a lamp. A table. And when your mother put your carrier on our living room floor, you’d open your eyes wider, pointing up at the swirling ceiling fan. “Dot, dot, dot!” you’d say.

But, eventually, you learned other words. The Mohawk grew out. You got bigger. If you had anything to say about the endless tie-dyed wardrobe your mother dressed you in, from diaper covers to teensy little socks to onesies, you made no comment. I came to see you and you came to see me, and your mother and I fed you black olives and steamed broccoli and generic Cheerios. Yours was the first diaper I’d ever changed, a fact that I have earned the right to hang over your head for the rest of my life. And I’d never assisted a child on the toilet until you came along. “He’ll need a wipe,” your father said, when he dropped you off with us. I admit I was flying blind on that one, and had never done that particular…um…service on anyone but myself, so I was being especially careful. Apparently, you were not pleased with my work. “Stop fooling around and wipe my Uranus!” he demanded.

But we all survived. We survived tie-dye. We survived toilet training. During a walk through an orchard, Poppa survived my first attempt to teach you how to juggle. I demonstrated, and then you, with all your toddler strength, winged the two little apples I handed you straight backward into his gut. (He forgives you, by the way.) We survived all the “bad” lessons Aunt Jenny taught you in my totally good-hearted attempt to play creative games with you. Note to future mothers and aunts: unless you want your children putting every small household object in their mouths, do not put on a funny hand puppet, such as a frog, and make it eat every small household object within reaching distance. Fortunately, I was able to distract you from the metal tape measure in time. We survived arguments with your brother over who got to use the Playstation, who got which bed when you came to sleep over at our house (after we moved away from the tiny apartment where you stared in abject fascination at a ceiling fan.) We even survived that one incident at the Schenectady Air Show about which your uncle and I are sworn to secrecy that we will never, ever tell your parents (just in case they or any of their friends are reading this.)

You were – and still are – an amazing and unique piece of humanity. What other child would ask for monogrammed handkerchiefs? Or would save up his own money and buy a Victrola? Or would, from the vast range of things you could request for your tenth birthday, want to go to the opera? Or would, after an ignominious start to your elementary school career by getting detention on your very first day, go on to perform a jaw-dropping solo, dressed as Mighty Mouse, in the kindergarten play (and that wasn’t even your first time on stage – far from it.)

I’ve sat in countless scaled-down auditorium seats and watched you perform in many plays after that, and in the chorus, and the band (I’ve lost track of the number of instruments you can play.) And recently, it was my privilege to see you perform with your high school jazz band at Lincoln Center, competing for the honor of playing for Wynton Marsalis.

And tomorrow, it will be my privilege to watch you walk up to the podium and accept your high school diploma. You will be stepping onto a very different stage in your life. But hopefully, once in a while, we’ll still get tickets to the show.

And maybe tomorrow, your dad could bring a few of those monogrammed handkerchiefs… I think I’m going to need them.