Aunts

“You were the one I told things I could not tell anyone else. No lecture, no judgment, just a safe place to land whenever I needed one.”

“You treated me like a grown person years before anybody else was willing to. You asked me real questions and then you actually waited for the whole answer.”

“You have stories about my grandmother that nobody else in this family knows. You tell them properly too, with all the parts the rest of them always leave out.”

“You are the one who knows what everybody was actually like before they were parents. The stories nobody else will tell me about my own mother come from you.”

“When I rang you at an unreasonable hour you did not ask why I had not rung home. You just said you were awake, which I am fairly certain was not true.”

“My parents always had to be careful with me. You never bothered with that. You told me straight, and you did it kindly, and I listened every time.”