Those of you who know me probably never really expected that I will be an aunt and my sister will be a mum so soon.
Well, life happens...literally.
More than a month ago, my sister gave birth to an adorable baby boy and I became an aunt, a proud aunt.
This post is a bit of a confession and also a beginning of a route to discovery what being and aunt means and feels like.
A can already say that my feelings have been all over the place - from deep love to an irrational fear.
Every moment of being an aunt teaches me something new:
- My ear-drums shake wildly and try their best to endure the intense cry.
- My mind (constantly preoccupied by worried at the normal state) let´s go and let´s itself being absorbed by the rare split moment when he actually stares in my eyes.
- My heartbeat almost instantly synchronises with his heartbeat while I hold him against me.
- I get goosebumps when he rests his pillow soft palm on my face.
- I surf on the wave of adrenalin when that makes me sweat so badly that I feel the drops of sweat running down my lower back while trying with all my might to calm down the roar coming from that 3,5 kilos of a new human being.
Nothing really prepared me however for the amount of responsibility and fear that will overwhelm and almost paralyse me.
Holding a baby - not yours, yet as close to you as it can be - comes with an incredible sense of responsibility. It bloody is not some sort of a thing you can replace, or an animal you can pet. It is a living breathing, ear-drum-shaking cry producing human being with a future...a future that you want to be the brightest as possible.
My mind immediately became an over-producing typewriter of all the possibly horror scenarios that might happen to the baby.
No matter how stupid your thoughts are (when was the last time you tripped over your legs while walking on a flat surface really!) you still want to make sure that you will be just insanely extra-careful.
Now might be a time to admit that I also turned into an over-protective and over-caring lioness and to say that I did not hesitate to cycle 20 kms forth and 20 kms back to the nearest cherry farm, to pick the darkest possible cherries so that my sister can snack on them and the baby (in my mind) can get the best possible nutrion.
Yeah, I know...the cherries from the local supermarket might have been just good enough, but there simply is no arguing with a proud aunt.
The precious precious moments of peace
You know that sentence from cheesy romantic books "I looked at his eyes and I was lost"...that actually is the truth for me and my little nephew.
His glance can wander, but from time to time he does focus on me. He looks at me with his eyes that you still cannot tell a colour of...the eyes that yet have seen so little of what is to see out there and I am completely lost.
I cannot help but wonder...
What do I see there? Do I see anything? Do I see what I want to see? Do I see the end of the world / the beginning / the ultimate truth or innocence?
And what does he see? Does he see the almost 25-year-old person who never thought she would be an aunt before she was a mother? Does he see the person who is still trying to figure out what she wants? Or does he see a person whos eyes have the same colour as his moms and whos voice is almost identical to hers and yet have so little in common?
Well, I guess I will just have to find out in the exciting days and years of being an aunt to come.
