Across the Miles

"Tiny Victories: The Sweater Grrl Lifetime Original Picture"

I think there already was at least one Lifetime movie called "Tiny Victories." So I'm not very original this morning. Nothing new with me. Most of my humor is borrowed from someone else.

I have three nieces. The eldest started high school yesterday.

A moment to process that information. That tiny baby I held in my arms, my first baby to feed and dance with and change a diaper...that baby is now fourteen years old. And she is everything I never was at that age...beautiful, multi-talented, outgoing, popular, mature, and amazingly self-confident. She's also incredibly compassionate and intuitive. To me, she is everything you would wish a daughter to be. I know she's not perfect. And I know she battles with her parents. But what a great kid she is. Outstanding. She makes smart decisions. She goes after what she wants, and she gets it.

I find myself fascinated with her life. It is a childhood and especially an adolescence that I never had. Her life is about parties and trips to the mall and movies with friends. She has been to Disney World never every year of her life, she has been to New York and seen Broadway musicals, she and her family even lived out of the country for two years. They are an active family - lots of excursions to neighborhood parks, museums, water parks, and the beach. She has had the blessing of a healthy, happy, comfortable, loving upbringing. She is adored and admired within the family, and she radiates that love back. She is the first grandchild on one side of the family, and that is usually quite a coveted spot.

But I live here and she lives somewhere else, and it is one of my life regrets that I have missed so much of her upbringing, and the other two as well. I haven't been there for the piano recitals and the band concerts and the gymnastics routines. I think I've been to one thing in all of their years of pursuits...a soccer game when the eldest was probably about six or seven. That's it. Pitiful.

When I am with them, it is quality time. The thing we do the most is play games. We all love games. Rummy cube, Scrabble, Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Yatzee!, whatever. We also just hang out and talk and I get to hear about all the exciting things they've done, how they feel about things, what they want to be when they grow up.

They love me. They really love me. I don't understand why. I can't keep up with them. They are all so healthy and energetic and beautiful. I keep waiting for them to reject me, to figure out that I'm boring and ugly and not worth their time. Everyone says the youngest one looks so much like me when I was her age. She does. But I'm waiting for her to look at me and say sweetly, "But I'm not going to look like you when I get to be your age, am I, Aunt Sweater Grrl?"

They miss me. And I miss them, so much. But I just don't think I can live with my family. I love them all, but I'm too different. I don't fit in. My health is not good enough. I don't think the way they do about many topics. I don't have the money. And I'm a Democrat.

I like to live vicariously through their lives...I like hearing about the parties and museums and friends. The middle niece will tell you everything you want to know, as will the youngest, but the oldest is more reserved. She doesn't share as much, and I don't want to be pushy. At some point she'll probably become difficult and resentful. They all will. Its a sad but true fact of adolescence. But I believe that tide will turn, and each one will come out the other side even more amazing than they are now. I look forward to each new chapter in the tales of the three butterflies.