ANTHOOD

I am an aunt, like the bug.  My husband says it differently, and to be fair, the girls are most properly his nieces, but I feel that if I deserve the title at all, I should at least be able to choose the pronunciation.  Perhaps there are those who feel that the phenomenon of the sibling-child should not be encapsulated by a crunchy black insect on stick legs, but I will move past that.  In my aunt-hood I plan to redefine the station in such a way that will banish insects from mind.

I saw an ant this morning who was wending his frantic way from one side of the sidewalk to the other.  Actually, he never reached the far side.  My foot fell upon him mid-step, and I’ll admit this: I did it on purpose.  He was too smug.  I didn’t even look back.

This may be the reason that some people speak of aunts with a British twist in their voice.  Forget dialect issues or accents – this is not phonetics, nor even semantics: the people who prefer this pronunciation are plagued by the image of a small bug getting ruthlessly smashed by the sole of a shoe.  As they look down at the pink-faced sibling-child (niece, in my case), black bugs are far from their minds.  And they are content that the bugs should stay there.

I recently held the newest sibling-child, niece, and I did not feel like a bug.  I felt, on the contrary, that I had gone up in the world.  The first niece came before I was an aunt at all.  I have since become her aunt, but when she was pink and new, I was nothing at all, unless you consider girlfriend-of-the-uncle to be something.  The bug association was not formed, so there could be no image wire-crossing.  But my importance has increased by means of a particular wedding (a very particular wedding) and the second child can claim me with her first words as an aunt.  Like the bug, maybe.

An upgrade, then, of a strange kind.  I could not claim the title at the first birth, so I could not be a bug at all.  I have become much buggier with the advent – truly, in the truest sense of the word! – of the second niece.

I saw an ant later in the day, several hours after the one that I left in poor condition (or so I assume, for, as I said, I did not look back to check).  I saw it, and I spared it.  It was not a terribly profound or premeditated action.  It was more of a memory of the ant whose little buggy life I had knowingly taken.  Knowing what, though?  Knowing where my foot fell?  No, more than that.  Knowing how much my fate was tied up with the fate of the small creature.  The ant did not think, being only a bug.  Even in hindsight I feel no remorse.

But I saw the second ant and stepped over him, feeling the full importance of my bug title.  It was not an insect that I spared: it was my own dignity.  I will be an aunt and my non-victim will be an ant, and we will be pronounced in exactly the same way.

It creates an entirely insignificant bond between us.  Perhaps as insignificant as my ultimate role in the life of the pink-faced child.  When she is grown, I will be only An Adult, and no more noteworthy than any of the rest of them.  Hardly an upgrade.  Hardly at all.

The chance to be a bug at her birth still makes it worth noting.  Better than being an ex post facto bug, in a way.