Aunt T is in the house ya’ll!
My dad has five sisters and one brother. The middle sister is my Aunt T and is, without doubt or contest, my favorite aunt. There’s just something about she and I that just clicks. Even when I was an angst filled, out of hand, balls to the wall teenager and my dad had all but written me off as a lost cause, my Aunt T was still there. When I went to college in Nebraska about 45 minutes away from my dad’s hometown, my Aunt T was there to greet me with open arms. When I spent my first Thanksgiving away from home and my grandmother invited me to the family celebration and everyone else there was either mean or flat out ignored me, it was Aunt T who stepped in to do her best to make me feel welcome (my grandmother later laid the smack down and the family was nice to me ever after).
She is a brilliant, funny, aware woman who loves to be challenged and think outside the box. She’s currently working on her dissertation to get a Doctorate in Education and she’s the superintendent for a consolidated school district in Nebraska. She spent years teaching on a reservation in northern Nebraska and she saves all year long so that she can spend all summer traveling.
She and I used to meet for breakfast on a fairly regular basis in my college town to catch up and trade familial gossip. I loved those breakfasts. Even though they were in a motel restaurant that only used Velveeta in their omelets, they were wonderful opportunities to have some family connection when I was 500 miles from home.
I’ve always looked up to my Aunt T because she has always unabashedly lived her life on her own terms. Regardless of whether it was conventional or not, she always chose to live in such a way that was not only an absolute celebration of her core values, but also cutting her own path to happiness.
And now, she’s here to spend some time with her big brother before he moves out of this world and into the next.
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