What Kind of Aunt I'll Be Someday

When my little sister grows up, gets married, and has kids, I'll be the weirdo aunt who still doesn't have her life together. I will have two cats, neither of which will love me as much as my first cat, Missy Butterball, did. I'll ask my sister to let me have the kids over for a week during the summer, and she'll come over first to inspect my entire apartment: she's make sure I have enough nutritious food for her children and that the power outlets and cabinets are childproofed. She'll also hand me a schedule of places I have to take the kids every day—like the aquarium and the water park—because she doesn't want us to sit around doing nothing for a week. In the evenings, I'll tell my nieces and nephews rambling stories about how I didn't appreciate BYU while I was there, and how all the intelligent, good-looking, ambitious Mormon men marry within a year of returning from their missions, and then we'll watch lots of movies and stuff ourselves with ice cream. Hopefully, when the kids are young, they'll find it romantic that I keep moving and always wear strange clothing. They'll find my tales of trying to make it as an editor, writer, teacher, poetess, secretary, bookstore clerk, maid, waitress, and other minor vocations fascinating. My greatest achievement will be one of my teenaged nieces running away to my house because she and my sister got in a big argument about how my niece doesn't want to take AP classes anymore. Maybe they'll be arguing about a boy—but I doubt it, since my family's late-bloomerism will have been what got me in my position in the first place.