Tag Archives: good aunt

Somebody’s something

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I’m a newcomer to the BBC’s wildly popular Downton Abbey, and have worked my way through Season 1 and 2 on DVD. If you haven’t made it through season 2 yet, let this serve as your spoiler alert (but come back and read this post after you’ve caught up on the series).

Toward the end of Season 2, Lady Grantham receives a letter from her daughter Sybil with news that she’s expecting her first child. Lady Grantham is thrilled, but Lord Grantham is not, for the simple reason that he never approved of the marriage between his daughter Sybil and the household’s Irish chauffeur, Tom Branson. He threatens to disown Sybil because of her decision to marry someone outside of her class, but because he really does love her and is generally a decent chap, he softens his stance, and the marriage takes place.

Lord Grantham sounds resigned as he says that Sybil’s fate is sealed now that she’s pregnant, as if before her pregnancy, she could or would have undone her marriage to Tom. Lady Grantham’s response to him is that it wasn’t the pregnancy but the marriage itself that set Sybil’s life on its current course. (She further cements her place as one of my favorite characters by assuring Lord Grantham that she won’t be kept from her first grandchild simply because Sybil’s marriage doesn’t fit with conventions of the day.)

Lord Grantham isn’t alone in his thoughts that children are the cementing element of a marriage. The term “starter marriage” became popular in the late 1990s, and I remember some coworkers teasing a newlywed among us that she could have a starter marriage (as several of them had already had): a short marriage that ended in divorce and never produced children. How sad it is to me that there’s even a term for such a marriage and a prevailing attitude that the end of such a marriage can be taken lightly because it doesn’t matter as much as one that produced children. Continue reading →

How do you say “good aunt”?

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Pearls Before Swine is one of my favorite comic strips, and this past Saturday’s strip got me thinking about the different ways and reasons we say “aunt.” (Take a moment to read the strip and then come back).

Sociolinguistic differences
The way we say the word “aunt” depends in large part on where we grow up. Many of us (and I’m talking about the United States, primarily) pronounce it like the insect “ant.” There are others who say it like “ahnt” to rhyme with the way many of us say the word “daunt.” Others say it in a way that sounds almost like the word “ain’t.”

I found a cool map showing regional differences of how we say the word “aunt” that those of you who are word geeks (like me) might enjoy seeing.

Of the women I interviewed (all of whom have at least some connection with the southern United States), here’s the break down of how they say the word:

  • 18% say the word like “ahnt”
  • 9% say the word like “ain’t”
  • 73% say the word like “ant”
  • All of them pronounced the word like “ant” at some point during our conversation, possibly a reflection of the way I was saying it.
  • One women also spoke of “aunties,” pronounced like “ahnties”

Fortunately, as Goat points out to Pig in the comic strip, we’re not all shooting each other over this difference in how we say “aunt.” Continue reading →

The rejuvenating power of play

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Deep in conversation

I wanted to follow up on a comment to last week’s post. A woman wrote in to thank me for challenging her assumption: “As a friend with kids, I just always assume my children are annoying people who don’t have kids.”

This assumption – that kids annoy adults who don’t have children – immediately made me think of so many of the women I interviewed talking about their own aunts playing with them or describing their love of playing with the children in their lives. I don’t have any evidence of how widespread this assumption is, but I hope today’s post will help dispel the notion that children always annoy those of us who aren’t parents.

The ways we play
Remember the aunt who made clothes for her niece’s frog? By ensuring that the frog had a proper wardrobe, she was honoring her niece’s desire to play and showing her that playtime was valuable enough for her to contribute her own time and talent. I’m pretty sure I never played with frogs when I was little, but one of my mom’s friends (an unmarried, older lady) always brought me clothes she made for my Barbie. I cannot describe how special I (and my Barbie) felt to have these fabulous clothes. Continue reading →

Celebrate Auntie’s Day this Sunday

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Time for a bonus post for the week to let you know about Auntie’s Day this Sunday.

One of my very best friends reminded me that Sunday is Auntie’s Day. She’s a mom to four children (whom I consider honorary nieces and nephew), and she’s a fabulous friend, too.

If you’d like to know more about celebrating Auntie’s Day (with ecards and more), here’s the Savvy Auntie site. You can also click the graphic above, and it’ll take you to the site.

Celebrate
How will you celebrate? With an ecard or a real card or a phone call or a visit to your favorite aunt? If you’re an aunt, do your nieces and nephews even know about Auntie’s Day? (Feel free to send them a link to this post as a not-so-subtle hint about your special day.)

If any of you have especially fun celebrations this Sunday, I’d love to hear about them here. And whether your nieces and nephews honor you this weekend, I hope you’ll do a little something special to honor yourself. Because as the tagline of the Auntie’s Day promo says: “Aunthood is a gift.” Happy Auntie’s Day!

 

The good aunt and sticky friendships

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Please forgive the later-than-usual post today. I was spending time with a dear friend and her family earlier today and then came home to find sugar ants all over my kitchen counter. A war ensued, and though I’ve left the kitchen and moved to my home office, ants keep crawling down my arms (so please also forgive any typos – crawling critters make me spastic).

Anyway, what I really want to share with you today is a call to take up arms in a different sort of battle: a battle for stronger friendships.

Yesterday’s New York Times published an intriguing article about why it’s so difficult to form friendships after the age of 30 (Thanks to Enuma Okoro for calling this article to my attention – she’s one of those amazing “people magnets” that I’ll speak of in a moment). The article points out that college is one of the last times most of us have an easy time creating deep friendships.

Now I know there are some of you out there well past college age who have absolutely no trouble making friends. Some of you have the sort of personality that draws people to you with little effort on your part. I’m friends with a few of you, and you “people magnets” can go read some other blog if you like.

But for those of you who have drifted away from more friends than you care to admit, I challenge you: decide which ones mean enough to you to make a true effort at rekindling the friendship. For those of you who have met someone you think could be a friend but haven’t quite connected with, follow the article’s implicit advice: ask that person to meet you for coffee, even if you have to schedule the date for several weeks from now.

You may be wondering what this has to do with good aunts. Many of us without children long to be not only good aunts to the children in our lives, but also good friends with women who have children. You might be surprised by how difficult this can be, especially for women in their thirties and forties, during prime child-rearing years.

Continue reading →