Yes indeed, I am blessed to be an aunt

“When I saw all the hair, I knew it was you,” said an elderly friend. “Come in. Are you pregnant?”

“No,” I said. “Are you praying?”

“Are you praying? You should be praying to St. Gerard. How old are you?”

I told her how old I was. There was a pregnant pause.

“Huh,” she said.

We had this conversation when I was in Canada last year, almost word for word, which made the repetition funny and removed any sting. It was a lot better than a conversation in Edinburgh in which a 29-year-old banged his spoon on the table and cried, “Married two years and no babies? Come on, get cracking!” Of course, even then I could take comfort from the reflection that perhaps I look much younger than my age. When you marry in your late 30s, you marry knowing that the stork might take awhile to find your house or, indeed, decide not to come at all.

But, although a little sad, the thought does not overwhelm baby-loving me because my parents generously provided for my future by presenting me with two little brothers and two little sisters, and so far one of the sisters has given me a nephew and one of the brothers has given me both a nephew and a niece. And this is one of the beauties of thinking of oneself not as a completely autonomous individual but as a unique member of an extended family: the appearance of babies in your life does not all depend on you. If you cannot be a mother, perhaps you can be an aunt. And it is good to be an aunt.

In literature, we aunts are a controversial bunch. P.G. Wodehouse peopled his books with aunts both good and bad but always commanding. Bertie Wooster’s Aunt Dahlia may be a good egg and nicer than his Aunt Agatha, but she still bosses him from pillar to post. Mark Twain gave Tom Sawyer an Aunt Polly, a disciplinarian of the “spare the rod, spoil the child” school, but not only does Polly have maternal love to lavish on Tom, she discovers she has enough to lavish on his friend Huckleberry Finn as well.

Both Tom and Huck lost their mothers at an early age, and this points to the sober reality of maternal death throughout history. Before the 20th century, giving birth was almost always  dangerous and very often fatal. In her Woman: An Intimate Geography, biologist Natalie Angier posits that the reason why human females live so long after menopause is that older females are necessary to the survival of babies in the event that the babies’ mother dies. This suggests, then, that the biological raison d’etre of women is not merely to survive and to reproduce but also to be on hand to help with child care. And in Mulieris Dignitatem, John Paul II explains that all women are called to be mothers in one way or another. So far, I have the “another” option.

I hope parents will forgive me as I enthuse about the advantages of being an aunt. I know well how tired and irritated parents can get, for when I visit my Ontario nephew and my Quebec nephew and niece, I get a good look at their parents. I have the greatest respect for parents who are, after all, on parenting call 24/7.  As a usually absentee aunt, I can only imagine how hard they work to keep their tempers even and to convince their children to go to bed and brush their teeth and be gentle with other children. But as a usually absentee aunt, I get a lot of credit for my own patience. After I spoke to my seven-year-old nephew for half an hour, my weary sister praised me for my staying power. She didn’t factor in the happy detail that making conversation with a seven-year-old is a rare pleasure for me.

Yes, aunts get much credit and a lot of love for doing relatively little work. This week I turned up in Quebec and found myself an instant hit with my nephew and niece. In terms of child care, I don’t think I did anything more taxing than buckle my nephew into a car seat and play a few games of foosball. And yet my toddler niece was horrified when she discovered that the train that carried me away was not going to bring me instantly back and burst into tears. My brother, of course, was the one who had to calm her down.

And, of course, there is the aunt’s delight of being around such loveable children. I have had a great time in Canada these past 18 days, but I can identify the very best moment, the memory I will take away with me to my childless house in Scotland. It was when my niece’s nanny carried her into the kitchen and pointed at an icon.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

My niece isn’t yet two.

“That’s Jesus’ mama,” she squeaked, and my heart turned to mush.

Yes, it’s good to be an aunt.