Margin Notes: To My Niece

Last week I saw you for the first time since your birth in August. I’ve been in school and my sister, your mom, in another state and now you are no longer a squished newborn but a wide-eyed, responsive 5 month old.

Babies scare me, in the way of one who doesn’t know how to hold or change or comfort a baby, a little creature alien to the way the world works. But this was you. You are family. You smiled when your papa punched his fist into the air and said, “Yes, Brooke!” You furrowed your brow when you didn’t recognize our expressions or what we were doing. You held eye contact and mimicked my smile, giving me this wild self-assurance.

As one of the youngest in my family, I’ve learned responsibility by taking care of myself rather than caring for a sibling. Yet here, trailing behind your mom to the restaurant bathroom with you in my arms, I felt that responsibility. People moved to let us by upon seeing you. I felt you, a small bear-hat-wearing bundle of responsibility, rest a little heavier in my arms at their response — keep my hand on your back, steady, steady. I later realized my necklace must have been pressed against your cheek, which your nana told me she had noticed but let go, knowing we were simply walking 20 feet to the bathroom and your mom was right with me. I was so nervous, yet, really, it wasn’t a big deal — full responsibility wasn’t mine yet.

It’s strange how sparsely we remember our childhoods. This visit was so present and memorable for me, yet for you it was another day of babyhood you won’t consciously remember. It’ll slip further into my own mind as well, along with other memories. Yet when older you wants to hear, I’ll be one of the ones who can tell you. This is not the first time I’ve considered my place in history, moreover, family history, yet it’s the first time I’ve had someone in which to ground the idea my present will be someone else’s history.

I don’t properly remember a good decade of my life (and history) the way I do now. I remember events like the upcoming St. John’s Father-Daughter Dance and Kids Camp because of their place in my family’s yearly patterns. I remember 9/11 only through reading, the actual day when I was 6 existing in my memory as what I think is a scene from a book — I’ve blurred fact by making up my place in history. I remember holding a balloon when my baby cousin was born and finding out my grandmother passed away all in the vague haze of being under 7 years old. I feel as if a separate self lived these stories, my present self knowing only the aftermath.

My present is that haze for you. By the time you are my age, your mom and dad will be fully cemented in their new identities as parents. My brother’s baby girl, due in a few weeks, will be born; you won’t remember that these first few months without your cousin even existed. My life right now as a college student will be a period of four, tiny years you won’t associate with the grown-up aunt you know. This, I think, is what makes family stories so interesting: we get to see the ones we are closest with as a different version of themselves.

Then, there’s more. By the time you are my age, the 2016 presidential race will be a flashcard with a single name you learn in school. 60 Minutes will have had more interviews than the one with Sean Penn that airs on television while we play with you. Tragedies will, unfairly, relievingly, sink further into our minds, hidden. Money will go up and down as will celebrities’ popularity. So, so many more books will be written. From the onslaught of headlines and events and people, we will remember only pieces, whether because of their magnitude, some personal significance, or no identifiable reason at all. How transitory this makes everything seem. And yet, nothing’s transitory — everything leaves influence even if we don’t remember from where it comes.

With you, I can see myself on the other side of the kitchen table, retelling where our family, our world, comes from to you. I’ll be the one to tell the backstory and then the backstory of that, which my family told me. The speed — the responsibility — of this role makes me worry about time and how lightly I treat it and how quickly it moves while I’m off dreaming about the future. It makes me feel that I need to pay attention and live the stories now, so I’ll have some to tell you later.

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Posted by Rachael Allen on Feb 5 2016. Filed under Featured Content, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.