"Aunt Rosie!"
Soph calls out. We're hunched over with sidewalk chalk on a backyard terrace, the squares getting more and more mismatched as the hopscotch board reaches the one hundred and the chalk wears down to a stub.
The trampoline slopes as I sit cross-legged across from Sadie, avoiding the exposed coils. Some of which have already fallen out.
The evening comes, and I'm curled up on the couch while listening for the noises. Whimpering drifts out from the bedroom and Jumping Jack is up. The moment of doubt is there but, "Hey love." my voice comes across hushed as I shift his blond mommy-missing head to my lap. A slight light comes through the closet curtain and we sit on the edge of the bed, Sadie, and Sophie laying in the bunks above. Shannon is at the very top bunk, her light still on for reading, though she's long out. Reindeer pj's lay close to Sae Sae for comfort.
The love I feel for these children is simultaneously like the sigh which comes with holding a mug of warm tea cupped in one's hands and like an underground river, something more sure and fierce. Sophie's droopy-eyed face peers over the wooden ladder, "lie back down babe."
Round and around to the rhythm of the ceiling fan I walk on braided rug patting Ash's back, "Hush hush hush, sleep, just sleep, just sleep, just sleep." My legs catch the rhythm as I awkwardly hold the weight of this baby at a slant against my thigh while bouncing him up and down. My eyes drift to the ceiling fan as the point of concentration.
In the morning Juice Plus vitamins must be eaten, according to Shannon, who at six knows where all the things are far better than I.
Later, Shannon lies splayed across the kitchen floor in hysterics her screeches so piercing I worry social services will come pounding at the door. Aaron sobs in the armchair not about to pick up any cards. Exhaustion and longing for parents have set in. Sophie rams into a wall. I don't know how, but it happens. Check teeth, grab ice, get clothe the mental checklist runs through my mind. Her tooth knocked upward and blood cometh forth. She sits perched on my knee with a cloth pressed against her gum. We read a story of run-away crayons. Every time the crayon who is the color of poo graces the page Aaron bursts into hysterics.
These times are all apart of this thing called aunt-hood which has shaped me since I was seven. At that age, I was walking down the cul-de-sac and the older people were talking about what my new nephew (Cael) would call me, aunt, ant, auntie? I hated the idea of all three, too foreign and embarrassing. Yesterday my niece, Tesla or Tiger, who is number seventeen of the nineteen nieces and nephews born, wrote my name on a piece of paper all by herself and it feels far from foreign now. It's now two of the most familiar and beloved of words.
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