Dad’s sister and Mom’s best friend. Grandma’s sewing circle. Your big sister’s cool friends. The ones who introduced you to rolled jeans and Air Supply. The older cousin who taught you how to blow smoke rings in your uncle’s barn. Mom’s co-worker, the one who always sang a little when she worked and gave you the good snacks. The neighbor who let you hide in her garden to read when your house was too chaotic. The changer of dirty diapers and the fixer of flat hair. Your mom, but way more easy going. Kinder, gentler, funnier. Always there.
This is for the women who whispered for you to run, when your mom said to walk. Your best friend’s older sister. She teased and she tormented, but she loved you loyally. The neighbor girl with the tattoo and the stories about sex, drugs. Rock ‘n’ roll, baby. The daring and the tall. Like wings on your back, with a soft landing every time you fell.
The cool chick who threw you the car keys when you could barely see over the wheel. Who lent you her lipstick and bought your first box of tampons. She highlighted your hair. Streaks of pink and violet running down the sides of your mom’s bathtub. She told you that you looked so grown up. And for the first time, maybe the only time, you believed it when someone told you that you were beautiful.
The other moms at the playground who were way more fun than yours. They hung out on the dock of the lake, passed out sugary treats in the classroom. They gave hugs, life jackets, Tootsie Rolls. They made you feel lucky to be included.
The confident teachers who knew that you knew the answer and that you wanted desperately to raise your hand, but you were too afraid. They’d smile your way, squeeze your shoulder when they walked down your row. And for the first time you felt like someone understood you, understood the awkward, quiet third grader with the hair in her face and a gaze that rarely left the linoleum floor.
To the ones who drove you to get the CD you weren’t supposed to buy. Parental Advisory. That’s okay, she wasn’t the parent. Just the driver to Dairy Queen. Windows down, music blaring, hands and arms hanging out the window, up and down in the wind.
The giver of confidence, for a time your only confidant. She listened to your middle school worries and told you it would all be okay. She promised to keep your secrets and she always did, even when she didn’t.
This one is for the women of their word and their worth. Teaching us little by little how to trust in all the ways our mom’s were not capable of showing us. It’s not that they didn’t want to, it’s that they didn’t know how. If only our mothers knew how much they were truly giving us, by sharing their sisters and their cousins and their best friends.
Their stories and their lives unfolding over the years and the miles and the late-night conversations when everyone else was asleep and your mind was trying to unravel what it meant to exist in this world as a girl, as a woman, as a tender heart walking around feeling alone and exposed.
They couldn’t always protect us. But they would always forgive us. They would always love us. Will always love us.
For our part, we were watching. We were listening and we were learning. And now that it’s our turn, we know what to do.
We love you, Aunties. And we are so thankful for your wisdom and your worry. That particular lens of the world that only you could offer. Pushing us to hold it up to our own eyes, to see all the parts of this world. We did want to see. We knew we could be brave, as long as we had your soft hand on our back and your wild and wondrous heart guiding us.
M.
Melissa Goodnight 