Sometimes I wonder how I ended up being the age that I am and not a mother (at least not a mother of the two-legged kind (we do have 2 dogs and 3 cats). Luckily, I do have three nieces (16, 13, 11) and a nephew (14) and they are all great kids. Still though, sometimes I feel like I’m caught between being too old to understand kids and too young (thinking at least) not to understand them.

Right now two of my nieces are creating Avatars for their SIMS games. They’ve spent about an hour and a half doing everything from creating their faces (heard a lot of comments about how nice Daniela’s “mom’s nose looked) and now they’re figuring out where their families will live. Every once in a while I hear some Japanese words spoken by the characters when they meet up and I can understand maybe one in twenty words (aso deska). I have no idea how the games are played but they do sound like fun from what my nieces have tried to tell me about them.

My little brother and sis-in-law came by to meet the girls tonight upon our return back from the beach and I was immediately aware of how my (considerably younger than me) SIL is so good at interacting with kids. She’s fun!! And has great energy to boot. I never stop to think about not having kids around all the time until the girls come to visit and then I realize what we don’t have. It’s nice to have them hanging around (except for when they’re fighting, then not so much). It’s also interesting to observe my brother’s kids’ behavior and my brother-in-law’s kids’ behavior…very different yet the same in many instances. One set have always had a mom and dad who love and respect each other and the other set have two homes with parents who love them very much but not each other. My hat is off to my brother-in-law who has made it a point to be very active in his girls’ lives and just bought a new home about five minutes away from them.

When I was little, I was infatuated with the idea of having six children, like my friend Jeanette from sixth grade who came from a large Catholic family. Then I grew up and didn’t get married until later in life which may be one of the reasons that the window for creating offspring shut fairly quickly (that and all the repercussions from my rather rambunctious youth!). I’m not sure what kind of a mom I would have made to humans (I seem to do quite well with the four-legged variety) but I’m starting to see that being a mother would be another awareness and acceptance of who I am. Sometimes I’m crazy fun and can stay in the ocean for literally hours and hours boogie boarding and other times I can sit quietly reading and just hanging.

What I know for sure (thanks O) is that I do not want to grow old and stiff in my ways and thinking. I hope that I can always be a fun aunt and also an aunt that my nieces and nephew know they can come to with various questions which I will definitely listen to intently while helping them to sort things out.

As Joni Mitchell sings, “we’re all just aging children”.