Great Aunt Bookgirl

Big news, kids. I'm going to be a great aunt. Now, I know what you're thinking. "We've heard the stories. Bookgirl already IS a great aunt." And yes, yes I am. Thanks for noticing. But we're talking geneology here, not quality. My niece is pregnant.

Since the youngest in my immediate family is my godson Jeremy, who's thirteen, it's been a long wait for a new little pumpkin at Casa Bookgirl. Couple that with the fact that Jenn is the only girl in the next generation (my other sisters all had boys), and has been trying for a long time to get pregnant, and this is, like I said, big news.

If I had a magic wand, and I could make one wish come true, it would have been this one. I wanted this for Jenn more even than anything I wanted for myself. I was out with my girlfriends the night Jenn called to tell me, and one of them showed up just as I hung up with her, to find me standing in the street with tears rolling down my face. "What's wrong? What happened?" I kept opening and closing my mouth, not able to get the words out.

I was only 4 when Jenn was born, and as kids, we fought like sisters. Or I guess technically I fought with her, and she had no choice but to fight back. You've all seen what happens when a family gets its first grandchild, right? It's like the sun rises and sets over that kid. Then add in the fact that she was gorgeous, and well, who would blame me for hating her? But by the time we were teenagers, I would drive her friends around. In my early twenties, I chaperoned Jenn's parties so she wouldn't have to have her parents there. Around the time she graduated college, she skidded right past me and became the more mature one.

And along the way, she became a really amazing person. She's a pediatrics nurse in a children's hospital, she took one of the babies from the hospital under her wing and years later still takes her for weekends and vacations. She spontaneously stops by my mom's house with flowers. Sometimes good things do happen to good people. It's nice when those people are the ones I love.