Aunt Me

Even though there have been 8 months to prepare for my new role, I am still astounded that I will be an aunt in less than a month. Maybe it's never having been pregnant myself that makes the pregnancies of all the women in my life who have been or are pregnant seem to go by with extreme speed. Or maybe it's just that I live in some twisted time warp of my own making. Because I swear it was only a few weeks ago that my sister was telling me she's expecting and now here she is nearly ready to give birth. I look at her, a rounder, more baffled version of herself, clearly going to have a baby, and I still can't seem to grasp it, that she'll be a mother. And she can't grasp it either; in fact, the weight of it seems too heavy for her to even imagine being able to lift. But the truth is, she's going to be a great mother -- and I hope to be a great aunt, because as the due date rushes in, it seems like such a special and amazing thing to be, something that the speed of all this has prevented me from really getting until now.