Nephew

Watching a child and seeing them grow is a uniquely beautiful and wondrous thing. There is a raw fascination and curiosity that shines through their face with every new discovery, and an awe in their eyes when their little consciousness expands to assimilate new experiences. There is the excitement when they use the right word that the big humans understand, and the frustration when they can’t communicate what’s wrong, especially when they’ve only recently stepped into the world of verbal communication. But the best thing to witness is when they use the right word in the best way at an unexpected moment.

A baby just more than one and a half years of age, my nephew Eric learns how to say more and more words every day (or at least some understandable version of them). When I got to visit him (and his parents, of course) over Thanksgiving, I got to see the formation of a young human mind in the moments that shape it. I feel lucky and I am grateful that I get to catch glimpses of my nephew in his development. He’s sweet and cheeky with big blue-gray eyes, an adorable laugh, and a voice that is hard to say no to. Now that he’s learning to communicate with verbal language more and more, his vocabulary is expanding and so is his voice, which he is never afraid to use.

For now, his vocabulary is a lot of ‘up’s, ‘down’s, and ‘mommy’s. Some ‘baseball’s and ‘hockey’s in there, too. If you think you can deny that child when he pitter-patters over to you, raises his arms up, and says ‘up’ while looking into your face with quiet desperation, I promise you’re wrong. When I wore my Tampa Bay Rays baseball sweatshirt, Eric would point to the logo at my chest and say bay-ball. If he wanted to go up to his room and play with his adorable, child-sized hockey sticks, he’d say haw-key? like a question. When he hit the ball off his tee just right or shot the little styrofoam one into the net with his stick, he’d raise his fist up, say Yeah!, and look at everyone else to join in praise.

But my favorite word in his vocabulary is a new word he just learned. I taught him to say “Auntie” last weekend, and it stuck. After some light conditioning, my face became associated with the word, and for the next couple of mornings I was greeted with a little smile and a little voice saying Auntie! as I walked into the kitchen. And every time he said it, the smile that came with it melted my heart.

My last day in town was spent watching football, going for a walk, throwing rocks in the lake, then lazily watching cartoons for the rest of the afternoon into evening. When deciding what to watch, we first had to gain Eric’s approval of the showing.

“No,” he said. “No. No. Noooo.”

This went on and on. As we scrolled through various streaming services (do we really need that many?), Eric said no to everything we offered up as a choice. His voice would change every time he said it, too. Sometimes the no was shorter and firmer, the next would be a little higher and more irritated, and the next would be longer and more desperate.

“That’s your favorite word, isn’t it?” his mom asked, sitting next to him on the couch. She poked him a couple of times to get his attention and asked, “Eric, what’s your favorite word? Hmm? What’s your favorite word, Eric?”

Eric stopped, pulled his attention from the tv, and smiled.

“Aun-tee,” he said.

It struck my heart with a quickness, and suddenly there were tears in my eyes. His little face broke out into a wide grin, but the gravity of the moment was much different for me than I’m sure it was for him. We all aww’d and my brother laughed at my sudden descent into emotion as I strained to keep the tears from falling.

“Eric,” I said. “You made Auntie cry.”

It was just so unexpected, and so damn cute. I’m his favorite word! I felt so much love for my little nephew in that moment that I had to stop and make a mental note to never forget it, and I made a verbal promise to Eric that I never would.

Because that feeling you get in moments like these — feeling like your heart could burst with love, like you could cry at such touching if only momentary beauty, like you could single this moment out and frame it on the wall of your memory so it was never lost —

That feeling is the very meaning of life.