Have you ever encountered an event, which in just a few minutes, makes you feel old? I mean really old. Well, this weekend was just full of those moments for me.First, it began Friday night. My nephew’s wife went into labor, a few weeks early, but labor nonetheless. One minute I’m getting ready to tuck into bed, the next, my mother is on the phone, “The doctor is on his way!”
Now, I know women give birth to babies all day every day, but it’s not often my nephew becomes the father of…wait for it…his second child. My second great-niece/nephew.
What’s so traumatizing about that you may ask? Well, he’s on his second kid and I still remember the day he came home from the hospital!
So, now you know why it makes me feel old. I remember changing his diapers and watching his first bath. I remember teaching him to pitch and catch and slide into base.
I remember running (yes, at one time in my life I could run) behind him try to teach him to ride a bike. Helping teach him to swim. Tie his shoes.
I remember his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle bed sheets and going on holy quests at Christmas looking for those stupid stuffed Wrestling Buddies (he just had to have Jake the Snake and Hulk Hogan).
Then along came baseball cards and video games. We spent hours together slinging pizzas with TMNT on Nintendo and then headed out to ball practice.
His mom, my sister, was a single parent working shift work at US Steel, so the whole family had to help out when it came to raising up the little ones.
When I started school at Alabama, I drove home nearly every day in the spring and summer to watch baseball or dance recitals (I did a lot of the same things for his sister when she came along around a year behind him), or just to keep an eye on them while their mom worked her tail feathers off.
When he was little, Erik and I hung out together a lot. Baseball games, car shows (it was too cool that his aunt was a card carrying gear-head) and we collected baseball cards (of which we both still retain thousands of).
I feel like I played an important part in raising both Erik and Rhea, and now he’s having babies of his own and Rhea and her husband are trying. Jeez, they’re showing no mercy to their aging aunt!
So, this weekend we welcomed Brett Erik into the world at 5 pounds, 15 ounces. He’s about three weeks early but welcome all the same. He joins his sister Breanna in being the light of their daddy’s eyes and their MeMomp’s life. (MeMomp is my sister – their grandmother).
So, I’m feeling pretty old this week. But times change and kids grow up. All we can hope for now is that we did a good enough job raising them up so they can do the same raising up their own.
Afterall, they’ve got to be the parents. I get to be ‘Crazy ol Aunt Kel who breaks them in on sports cars, big dogs, and loud music (which by the way, Breanna has a head start with the Metallica Lullabies CD and a photo prop on the Big & Rich Web site). The way I look at it, my work here has just begun.
