“Remoted” – Workday 40/ Day 51 (Wednesday)

Today is another day. Obviously. Duh. But it’s another kind of sort of “special day” to make it three in a row for  this week. It’s my oldest niece’s birthday (she’s 21 now, holy moley, how did that happen?) and the anniversary of the day I first became an Auntie.

Life has changed so much since 1999. Back then, I lived in a really cool and huge apartment (bigger than the house I have now) that had a fireplace and a wrought iron elevator and low rent with heat included. I worked as a financial writer with an amazing editorial team of mostly lawyers and we were creating a new reference product covering ten areas of financial planning. Days were spent researching IRS code and business law and rewriting it so normal people could understand it, which sounds like pure hell to most people but I really loved it because I’m weird like that.

On this date in 1999, I raced in my little Nissan from Worcester where I lived and worked to the hospital in Leominster to be with my sister. I brought lotion and massaged her feet and a nurse thought I was a massage therapist. While brushing my sister’s hair, just like when we were young (my sister has almost always had amazing long, silky hair), another nurse thought I was her hairdresser. Then my niece was born into the world and it was amazing and I fell in love with her instantly. (And I got to fall in love twice more in later years when her sisters were born.) 

That first time
as an Auntie.

The first time I babysat my niece, she fell asleep on my thighs while I sat on my sister’s couch, and I just sat there looking at here for at least an hour, probably more but it’s hard to say, as time didn’t really matter in that moment. She was the most beautiful, perfect little creature I had ever seen. Now she’s a beautiful, perfect adult and lives in Las Vegas.

Since that day so long ago, it’s been multiple jobs and career redirects, and several moves with time spent living in Korea briefly then Tennessee for 12 years. There were periods of intense busy-ness with marriage and jobs and houses and divorce and art and dance and roller derby and a social life, all to distract from the intense longing of missing family and regret over being 1,200 miles away when my Mummu’s health was failing and all the years when the nieces were little and I could have been helpful.

When the longing, loneliness, and regret finally became too much, it was time to move back home to Massachusetts which oddly, hasn’t really felt like “home” since returning. By the time I moved back the nieces were teens or close to it and had school, sports, ballet and much richer social lives than I had then or even now. They are all amazing humans. Kind, smart, funny, and each talented in her own way. If I had my own kids, I think I would want them to be just like my nieces.

Happy birthday beautiful niece in Las Vegas, and big thanks to my sister and her husband for making me an Auntie all those years ago, with my apologies for being gone for so many of them.