On being Auntie Max

Yesterday I volunteered to drive down to Irvine to pick up my Eldest Nephew and Big Sister took me up on it despite the fact that I had not driven at all for 3 years. I hate LA freeways and I was a bit nervous, but the drive down turned out to be really enjoyable. I had the convertible and the pre-set radio stations came through for me with lots of sing-along music, much of it very LA nostalgic.

Irvine is creepy in an űber-suburban way – enough said. I got to Eldest Nephew’s best friend W’s house. “Auntie Max!!” and I got a great big hug from a gorgeous 6-foot tall 15-year old, which is, after all, sometimes exactly what a girl needs.

Eldest Nephew and I chatted in the car, back at my parents’, and later at the mourning house. Eldest Nephew had complaints about his mom, my Big Sister. He called her selfish and was gratified when I told him that I had told her exactly that to her face (well, on the phone) a few hours earlier. The talk got round to Eldest Nephew’s drinking habits: turns out he’s a vodka man. I like that Eldest Nephew is smart enough to know that he can trust Auntie Max, Aunt Little Sister and Uncle Asshole, and be confident that nothing will get back to his mom.

Eldest Nephew complained about his curfew and asked me what his mom had been doing at age 15. I called Annie’s daughter over for help and she brought up the time the SWAT team had surrounded our house when Big Sister was having a party. Eldest Nephew was deeply disappointed to find out that was only because someone had pressed the panic button rather than that some of the kids had thrown Molotov cocktails into a neighbour’s house. He wanted stories about kids being told to lie on their faces on the ground at gunpoint. So I told him about the time that Little Sister had been handcuffed by the police when she had pissed the neighbours off by having a punk band in the backyard.

“Did you ever tell Grandma and Grandpa?”

“Well, yeah, like 15 years later.”

Being Auntie Max is cool.