uncles & aunties

Growing up I had a lot of Uncles and Aunties

Most of them are gone now.

Joe, Vijay, Touchi. Countless others in faraway places who i briefly met but did not really know. Many more were not actually family, but part of my parents' adopted diaspora, living in a strange foreign land of Lee's Chickens, Winn Dixies, and Southern Baptist churches on every corner. For good measure, throw in a few of my mom's fellow teacher buddies who helped raise me after school.

I think about my parents' departed siblings, and the relationship I had with them that my wife and daughter will know little about. I sometimes miss them so much it hurts, because their deaths were too soon.

My daughter has 3 actual aunts and uncles she has met. Six if you count their respective spouses. The number goes up when you count extended family - our cousins, aunts and uncles our daughter has had the good fortune to meet. But then often closer is her always strange and silly "Cha Cha" from California who has visited her more than all her other aunts and uncles, despite the distance and his own dramas. And the old Jewish godmother on the Upper East Side who we don't drive down to see often enough. A classy lady I have become very fond of, who reports back on our well-being to her old roommate who happens to be my mother-in-law. Only in New York. 

Countless other close friends have earned the title of Uncle or Auntie for my daughter because they are our close friends, and even a few just because they are brown, yellow, or foreign - and that is part of our parents' culture we have chosen to carry with us. If you're not Asian and have achieved this title, i hate to inform you that you're stuck with it, and us.

Will my daughter continue to be spoiled by useful, amazing gifts from her "real" Uncles and Aunties like I was? From comic books, card games, Palm Pilots, salt & vinegar potato crisps, to strawberry ice cream, pink desks, micro scooters, and flowery dresses.

Will she be confused as she gets older? Who are her "real" aunts and uncles? Why do some of these non family members earn the title, and others don't? As she gets older will these cause her to seek meaningful friendships that are as close, and sometimes closer, than family? Will she grow to reflect on her relationships with the many visits to/from her many aunties and uncles, comparing who she is becoming as an adult to those adults that always were always visits for - like her parents, but seemingly cooler? 

Will she consider who her parents are - as people - in relation to their actual siblings? Will she feel remorse when they pass, and she realizes her family is shrinking?

I hope so. I also hope that she grows up with the privelage of being surrounded by the love, good and bad examples of her many aunties and uncles, related and otherwise.

Also, that she learns the trick of simply calling any friend of your parent (or brown/yellow oldwr person) whose name you cannot remember "Uncle" or "Auntie" - that one never fails.