The aunt

So when we got in, it was a bit of a whirlwind. My so-called, so-very-different-from-me friends were right behind me in the doorway with some of my belongings. I had my 5-month-old in one arm, a bag and my 2-year-old's hand in the other. I budged into the tiny entryway area, hesitant to track in snow or grit, encouraging my girls to go into the stranger's home. Both girls took one look at the woman in front of them, who was already wobbling toward us, not helping us with our things, and clung to me. My baby twisted in my arm, turning her head over my shoulder away from the woman she did not know, and clenching my jacket. Even my sociable, bubbly 2-year-old was wincing and finding protection behind my arm. The friends who had driven me two hours to get there were dropping my belongings at the door.

The flurry of activity and rush to get out of the January cold subsided momentarily. In the arrested moment, I couldn't dispel the feeling that washed over me that this was not going to be good. Small, needless talk was made. Whatever introductions and formalities were exchanged between the friends dropping me off and this aunt of my husband's were so fleeting and perfunctory that whatever hope of good there could have been from this new arrangement disappeared as quickly as we came in.

I feebly, desperately thanked my friends, the wife-and-husband duo I'd been living with for two months prior. My gratefulness for them bringing in my belongings was washed away in a moment of desperately wishing I could turn around and go back with them. But it was done and I knew it. We were here. Now. And it hadn't been working out between the three of us and our three kids (my two, their one), so here I was. I knew they were probably just relieved to get their house and life back; not have a living zombie of depressing emotions moping around in their house and the wife of a cancer victim to make their lives depressing. It still stung, though, when the moment for them to leave came and all of us stood in the entryway with nothing more to say and they left without pomp or circumstance. Nor telling emotion. The way they swept out of there made me wonder just how relieved they were to have me off their hands.

It was kind of a theme in my life. Needing way more emotional support than anyone could give. It made me realize that I asked too much of people. So instead of figuring out how I could fix that, which I neither had the time for or the patience (and that time in my life being when I needed someone to feel sorry for me the most,) I just balled it up and choked it down, just like every other injustice I'd learned to tolerate. I did it again just then, in that moment the door closed behind my friends, and I turned to the next endeavor. The aunt.

* * *

Did she welcome us? Smile? I don't remember. What I do remember is standing in that strange new doorway, feeling as alien and wanting to hide as my own children, praying and hoping that this would be a welcoming new start. A place to find refuge from the tsunami that was my life just then. I also remember the aunt, with her waddling gait and cold black eyes, who didn't give me a warm impression at all. If she was trying, it got lost the moment my 2-year-old started to whimper and the aunt dragged her away from me telling her to come into the house, forcing adjustment on my little girl, rather than waiting for her to warm up with my support.

I remember her taking the baby from my arms so I could take my shoes off, but when I finished and stood up--all of a minute--she was in front of me with my two children. The picture of this strange woman, who I'd only met once before then, with my children beside her, was an eerie snapshot of wrongness. The aunt looked almost... what was that look... defiant. Without being able to put it into words, I just knew it didn't feel right. I moved in towards my children to comfort them and take them back. It was a silly thought and I shook it out of my mind as I stepped further and further into this strange house, strange life, strange world to reassure my little ones that Mommy was right there. But it was just the thing that haunted me, an inaudible and undefined feeling: take them back. It was a ghost of a feeling that would stay with me for my duration there. What was that? What was that exchange? It was just another of many more gut feelings I'd learn to set aside. What else could I do with no landed immigrant status to get a job, no car, no money, none of my family around?

Not one to be easily defeated, I followed her to I don't remember where. Did she show me around first? Did she show me my room? Did we sit on the couch that day? It doesn't matter. I proverbially and literally tip toed around everyone in that house---the aunt, the uncle, their daughters, who were practically my age and remarkably normal in comparison--and tried desperately to keep a low profile so I could do what I was trying to do, and get out.

It wouldn't be that easy.

On top of everything else, and I mean EVERYTHING else, I was 21 years old. To everyone else around me, I was still just a know-nothing kid, which pissed me off. It worked against me in every way youth works against even the most level-headed, ambitious, qualified or intelligent person.

It is for this very reason alone, I digress, for why I can never and will never tell a young person that their opinions don't matter or wave off concerns I know, standing on this side of the age fence, they will outgrow with some dismissive, diminutive gesture or guffaw. Even when my ear has been bent by the same person for the same things ad nauseum and I get frustrated because I don't feel like they're doing anything for themselves to better their situation, I still shut up. I just listen. And then I try to ruffle up some inspiration with a tidbit for them or use my creative ability to offer a suggestion or two, based on the limits of their situation. (You'd be surprised about how giving someone something they can really chew on will actually enable them to see where the options are for themselves.) The fact is, you just don't know what their life is like. You can make intelligent assumptions, you can make belligerent ones, you can make generalizations, you can be as self-righteous or as concerned as you want to be, you can even be really good at understanding. But at the end of the day, you don't wear their shoes and you don't put your head to rest on their pillow. That deserves understanding.