When I walk into my sister’s home — and I walk in because she’s mistakenly given me my own key which means I’m over at least four times a week, if not six or seven — I hear two tiny voices fill the room.
“Liza!” They squeal.
Their chorus builds, chanting my name over and over again. It’s as if we haven’t seen each other in months and yet we most likely saw each other yesterday.
Then they’re at the front door so I’ll grab one of them, smooshing their face against my own. I’ll kiss their chubby cheeks or lips or hairline; I’ll hold their hand that’s undoubtedly stained with coloured marker from earlier; I’ll flip them around in mid-air, pinching their sides before we collapse in a heap of laughter on the grey couch.
I look at Selah and see how she’ll make the world better. She has passion and zeal and spice — you can see all of that in her sparkly eyes — and I know she won’t back down from hard things. I look at Noah and see someone kind and loyal and tender who I think will lead people well. In only a handful of years I see these qualities and more, fashioned and fanned into their very essence. I can only imagine how much better they will become.
Aunthood is like sunshine on your shoulders. It’s warm and light and golden. I want to take the glow I feel and pour it on top of them, making them feel warm and light too. I want to offer them space. I want to offer them safety. I want to offer them a place to always come back to if ever they feel afraid and alone.
I do not know how to be an aunt. I haven’t read books on the topic or done any research. When they were fresh and new, I hardly understood how to change a diaper and it always made me panic whenever they cried hard.
But I know how to love them. I know how to love them — because they’ve taught me how. They make it so easy.
The moment I met Noah, and then a few years later, Selah, I felt something crack and swell deep within me. It was almost painful, the way it surged and ballooned inside of my chest. It was real. It was sharp. It was overwhelming.
Turns out, it was love.
I remember the day clearly — it was just past 5 in the morning when my sister called me and told me Noah was here. It was an early winter morning, and we’d rushed to the hospital to meet him. I remember the way the sun was rising ever so slowly as we drove across the Skyway Bridge into Burlington.
Before I could enter my sister’s hospital room, the nurse stopped me in the hallway. I am ashamed of how I treated her.
“Visiting hours aren’t until 7:30,” the nurse said. It was 5:30 in the morning.
I stared at her. “My sister just had a baby.”
“You should come back in two hours,” she said.
“My sister just had a baby, and her room is right down this hallway, and I am going to see them both this minute,” I brashly informed her. It was a mixture of exhaustion and annoyance that I saw in her eyes, but she sidestepped me and I waltzed on through. Not my finest moment.
I entered the room and caught a glimpse of Noah. I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t stop staring at him — his impossibly small frame, the heavy bags under his newborn eyes — trying my best to memorize every tiny part of him.
I still try to memorize him now.
The love I thought I was capable of shattered in front of me when I held those two babies in my arms. It turns out, I am capable of offering so much more.
I thought of the ocean, the way you can never see the end of it, the way it stretches on, almost infinitely, and I thought, “The love I have for them is an ocean. I can’t see the end of it.”
I do not know who they will grow up to be. I can’t predict their future, just like I can’t predict my own. All I know for sure is that we’ve been given today.
So for now, I’ll pray for them in the mornings asking God to form them into people of love.
I’ll write Selah notes on her birthday each year, so someday she’ll have a stack of love letters from me.
I’ll read them stories, I’ll write them books, I’ll clink empty teacups with my niece, and build LEGO planes with my nephew.
I’ll tell them exactly what I see in them. I’ll continue to say, “Noah, you are so smart,” and “Selah, you are so brave.”
And I’ll never take for granted how it feels to walk into my sister’s home and hear those two tiny voices call out for me.