Other's or Aunties' Day

Yesterday - in NZ - and today - in the US/Canada - it has been The Day that Should Not be Named.  This year, with all the turmoil going on at home with a terminal husband, the day registered but barely. Still, last night as I was going to bed, I got a message from my niece. She's been through a lot. She's studying psychology as an adult student, and doing great, putting all her experiences and growth into the course. I'm very very proud of her.

She said: 

"Wanted to say thinking of you today on  Mother's Day. I cannot pretend to know what emotions get brought up on days like today. So happy Aunties day instead, love you lots."

I think that is the first time, in 24 years of Mother's Days since I lost my first pregnancy, that I've had a message from anyone outside of this community acknowledging that the day might be hard for me. Sure, I made a point of telling one or two people that is was hard, who then recognised that. My mother was one. But this was unsolicited, and just lovely to receive. She made a point of saying she's making a conscious effort to reach out to people in a small way, instead of saying nothing. Which seems to be a family trait. Or a NZ trait. Or a Western trait. Anyway, I've tried to do that too, and she reminded me it is worth continuing to do so. Trying is better than not trying.

Did I mention we are both middle children? ;-)  

So even if the day is tough, and the years are silent, small changes can and do happen.  And they will warm your heart when they do.

Biting my childless tongue

Over the last month, my husband and I have had three separate groups of visitors. Two crossed over with each other so we could have family dinners together. But I didn't estimate how exhausting it would be dealing with all the stresses and emotions of the visitors, the catering, the cleaning, the planning and the conversation. I guess starting at a high stress level doesn't help, does it? 

We had lots of laughs, and good times, and I appreciated all the visits, the wine, the avocados, the lunches and dinners bought for us. The adults-only nature of the visits was a change too, and made it easier. I am not ungrateful, and overall the visits were wonderful.

But I have to get a few things off my chest that I am pretty sure only my readers and one or two friends will understand. 

Actually, although I'm sure parents in my situation would feel the same, they might not be quite so afraid of saying the wrong thing, because they're never going to be hit with "you're not a parent, so you know nothing!" Not that anyone said this to me. It's just that I am always conscious it could be coming. 

Sometimes I laugh, and pre-empt the comments, saying, "I know I don't have kids, but at least that means I can't be criticised for doing the wrong thing, or doing the opposite of what I say I am doing!" Often that's enough to get a message across, and to point out the obvious before they do. 

Then I bite my tongue, as I hear about:

• kids not being given the freedom to choose what they study
• assumptions that only certain professions will a) make money, or are b) worthy for their kids
• kids who rarely get told "no" because their parent feels guilty 
• anxious kids, who desperately want a parent's approval, but the parent doesn't realise it or won't give it
• kids who are almost neglected, because they are "out of sight, out of mind"
• kids who are still treated like kids, and manipulated and encouraged in the direction that the parents want, when they have been adults for years!
• parents who are in complete denial that they are infantilising their adult children
• parents who believe they are allowing their kids to make their own decisions, but are clearly not
• parents who are horrified that their children are treating them the exact way they (the parent) treated their parents.

And yes, I know that last point dates me! 

It's also really frustrating to see male parents modelling traditional male behaviour to their daughters and sons, while their very capable (perhaps much more capable) wives bear all the emotional labour as well as all the physical work of parenting. So it also frustrates me to see the wives model traditional female behaviour to their daughters and sons too. As an old feminist, you can just imagine my stress levels rising, cumulatively, over the last month!

Mostly, though, I wanted to reach out and hug the (now adult or almost adult) children who were the subjects of many a conversation. And tell them that to wish to be someone else is to waste the person they are. Or to succumb to someone else's wish that you be someone else is to waste the person that they are. There are things we learn through pain and loss that could really help the next generation. 

 

And given that this is a bit of a rant, I'm going to finish saying that it is also frustrating to be spoken to as if I am indeed a teenager or young adult who knows nothing of the world, because this is how the parents speak now! Especially when the parents show little or no self-awareness of that. (Okay, I did not keep silent about that.)

So I bit my tongue, daily, sometimes hourly, sometimes every minute! Well, mostly. Ha ha!  

The thing I most wanted to say, though, and didn't, was "make your own damn cup of tea!"

And now I am going to make myself, and only myself, a cup of tea and relax.
 

 

 

 

Being an aunt

 A week or so, Loribeth alerted her readers to an article written by Yael Wolfe, titled I'm Retiring from Aunthood. She is a No Kidding author talks about her love for her nieces and nephews, and all the help she gave her siblings with their children. "Nothing was more important to me than those kids," she writes. She notes, almost as an aside, that the help was often one-sided, and that she didn't get the same degree of support and assistance from her family (except occasionally from her brother) that her siblings with children received.

Then one sibling and family moved away, followed by the second. The loss of the relationships obviously hurt her,. and the reactions from the family seemed to dismiss her loss. She writes, "But I do wonder if anything I did for them meant anything." And later, "And I wonder if being an aunt really matters, at all."

She is writing the article on Mother's Day, feeling left out and unwanted, and sad that no-one cares about aunts. "I think we should care about aunts."  

 And she finishes by noting, "I wish I could say that many will be sad to see me retire and move on to new adventures. But I really doubt anyone will notice. ... At least I can know that I did more than my best while I was on the job. I always was an over-achiever. I guess I’m just not sure anymore what I was hoping to achieve…"

The article is devastating. I hear the yearning that she feels for these children she loves, and for the role she played in their lives ("Second Mommy" for one of the children). I feel her loneliness that she now only sees her nieces and nephews a few times a year, when she used to see them a few times a week. I feel that too, when we are so far away from all my nieces and nephews and great-nephews - the closest is a seven-hour drive, and the furthest is on the east coast of the US. The Husband actually said to me the other day, as we were admiring photos of little great-nephews growing up in Western Australia, that we are very isolated from our families. It can be lonely.

I feel too the lack of acknowledgement she gets from not just the kids, but from her siblings, who have benefited from her love for her nieces/nephews, but are it seems completely oblivious. They are the ones who are at fault. Are they so focused on their family that they don't consider their sister, and let her know how much she will be missed? 

Also, the focus only on the nuclear family, rather than all who contribute to the lives of the children, damages not only those who are excluded, but it is damaging for the children. They might grow to see people as replaceable or unimportant or learn to take them for granted. The sadness they might feel at losing their aunt (in terms of time and physical presence) might be dismissed by the parents, and not fully acknowledged, teaching a child that their feelings don't matter.

The author quotes her nephew who, when she shared how sad she is that they are leaving, "just shrugs and says, “We just need some new adventures.”"  She is tremendously hurt by this. Though, without knowing how old he was, I wonder if he was parroting his parents. Maybe he expressed sadness or hesitancy about moving, about leaving his school and friends and yes, about his aunt, and his parents said, "we need some new adventures" to explain the move. Perhaps he is very sad, but not really allowed to express that? We won't really know, but it is a reminder that when we are feeling very hurt, we focus on that, rather than on the other possibilities. I think it is a reminder too that as aunts, we are the adults, and we can't really put our feelings before the children. For that reason, I wouldn't want to retire from aunthood, however hurt I am, or however distant (in geographical terms) I might be. Stepping back a little is fine, but I know I've always wanted my nieces (in particular, a couple with whom I've had closer relationships) and nephews/great-nephews to know that I'm here for them if they need me.

Of course, I'm not saying that she can't grieve the loss of these families and the children in her day-to-day life. It is a real loss, and one that I suspect will not be acknowledged by anyone except her No Kidding friends. It's one we understand, and for many of us, feel deeply.

I do hope that the children will always feel a closeness with her, established as it was at such a young age, and I hope that the children I've been close to will always feel that too. Writing this reminded me to text my 14-year-old niece, asking if she had received my birthday present. I've been irritated, for about a month off and on, that neither my sister (her mother) or my niece had let me know, despite me telling them when to look out for the mailbox. We were taught when we were young to send thank you notes. Thank you texts are so much easier, you'd think, but it seems not. Still, I had a lovely exchange with her, she confirmed receipt of the gift and was very grateful, we chatted about books, and she's promised to tell me what a particular book was like when she's finished it. She'll probably forget! I am not just secondary in her life, but come well down the list, simply because I see her only a few times a year. But I hope that these little exchanges remind her that she is loved, just as my exchanges with my adult nieces in Australia remind them I'm part of their lives, and that I love them. They start to drift away in their teens, but I think when they're adults they might come back to us - even if they don't communicate as often as we would like! And as older teenagers and adults, we develop independent relationships with them, separate from our relationships with their parents. That can be a real bonus! I think too that as adults they start to appreciate who we are, and our places in their lives, that they didn't, or couldn't, when they were younger.

Aunthood is complicated, and even more so when we don't have our own children. As children I've know have drifted away, or moved physically, I've decided to cherish the experiences I had with them, to value that time, and to understand that it had real value to them and/or their parents too. It taught them so much - that lives are different, that people other than your parents can love you, nurture you, teach you, laugh with you. If it hasn't continued, or if it changes, it doesn't negate the special parts we played in each others' lives. I think that's really important. To recognise that it was good, and to appreciate that.

The Childless Aunt

For the next few days, I get to be an aunt (and a sister, and sister-in-law). I know I’m lucky to be an aunt, even though I bemoan the fact that I only see her once or twice a year (and I see other nieces/nephews/great-nephews much less frequently). I also know that right now, it is a privilege to be living in NZ, where we don’t have COVID-19 in the community, and so when school holidays arrive (the winter two-week break has just begun), people can travel, stay with friends and family, and socialise. So I don’t know what my suddenly (it feels like) 12-year-old niece will want to do the next few days, but there’s possibly a trip to the zoo (or will she think she’s too old for that?), to Te Papa (our national museum), some walks, definitely some shopping (there’s a birthday present to purchase together), and some eating out.

It’s always strange to meet up with nieces and nephews as they grow into pre-teens and teens. I love that age, when we can have interesting discussions about all sorts of things. So I’m looking forward to that. But it makes me feel old too, because it doesn’t feel that long ago that I was a teenager!

I know I’ll be exhausted at the end of the week after their visit. But I know I’m lucky to have another niece to get to know at that age. I was thinking recently about another niece that I had a close relationship through her pre-teens and teens, as I used to be able to visit her and her parents in Singapore on my way to/from international business trips, and they also used to come back to NZ every year. I was often the chief “clothes buyer” with my niece, preparing her for her next year at school (she was in international schools as an expat), and she had an active interest in international relations, so we would talk a lot about different issues. Now she’s almost 30 (!), is not a regular or particularly forthcoming correspondent, and whilst we are great when we see each other in person, we don’t share our lives in the same way as 10 years ago. That change was sad for me for a while, but now I’m okay with it. I know that for a while, I was a very special person in her life. And she was (and still is) in mine. I’m hoping to have a similar relationship with littlest niece, but I know I can’t force it. Still, I will enjoy seeing her grow, and be grateful for that.

Being an aunt

I’ve been busy this past week being an aunt. On Monday, I taught my nephew how to make my delicious fudgy chocolate brownies. He’s 18, off to university in a week, and needed to know this essential information before he goes. I took pleasure in pulling out my mother’s old measuring cup, melodramatically telling him that my mother had taught me to bake with this cup, and now I had the honour of teaching him.

The rest of the week I hosted my sister and my littlest niece, who at nine-years-old turns out to be not so little, as she tried to use my No Kids status in her favour. When I asked her to do something because – not having children – I didn’t know how to do it, she pointed out that I "could use the practice!"

But I could go one better. I pointed out that one of the advantages of not having children was not having to do certain things that children could do for themselves!

It's not all about me

When we think about the impact we might have on others' lives, it's never the things we think about. For example, one of my adult nieces recently posted on Fb about a favourite old movie, tagged her sisters, and remembered that it was a movie I had given them. One of her sisters has separately talked about some of the things we had brought them from our overseas travels, none of which I can remember.

One of my 17-year-old nieces commented that on her last trip to New Zealand, she remembered the most amazing (her words) dessert I'd made them, with chocolate trees (it was a chocolate mousse, with chocolate palm trees as decoration). To her it was important, yet until now, I have always remembered that mousse as an embarrassing failure, as it was the one time I couldn't get the egg whites properly mixed in, leaving little flecks of white through it.

We can't control how others will remember us, and they remember things we have often forgotten. So it just reminds me to be me, and not to try too hard. Because they'll remember the funny things, the small things, the things that mattered to them, not the things that mattered to me.

Being a childless aunt

I’m enjoying having our twin nieces and their parents in town for the first time in over eight years (see my post Scattered Families on A Separate Life). I’ve bemoaned the fact (many times!) that we have no siblings living in this town, and my husband has no siblings in this country. It makes it harder as we have sole responsibility for caring for his parents, we won’t have the companionship of siblings here when we age so will be faced with decisions (friends vs family – perhaps another post to come), and we lose out on relationships with nieces and nephews too.

I was keen to spend as much time with them as I can. And then got thinking the other day about the depth of feeling I have around spending time with and getting to know the girls during the all-to-brief time they’re here in New Zealand. Mostly, in the past, I’ve put this down to the fact that they live so far away. After all, missing them and wanting to see them is a perfectly normal emotion. It’s not just on my side either. I know they feel the loss of not having any relationships with their father’s side of the family. Aside from us and their grandparents, the girls have never met any of them, including their cousins, and I find that really sad.

Then I stepped back, and thought about it some more. Do I feel this way because I don't have children? Or because I don’t have the luxury of having many other children in my life? If I had children myself, would I feel this real need to get to know them, and for them to know me?

I know that I would always want to get to know them, to +an extent. But I doubt that the need would be the same. If I were a parent, my primary relationships with children would be as a mother. But my primary relationships – actually, my only relationships – with children are instead as an aunt through my nieces and nephews, and through a few children of my friends. (Though as friends’ children grow, their parents’ friends see them much less. With nieces and nephews, that relationship always exists.)

And so I feel the loss. I’m not so much mourning the loss of my own children, because I’ve come to terms with that. But I do feel the loss of the relationships with nieces and nephews. They’re my only connection with the next generation, and I value that, when I can get it. They’re the only people who will remember me when I’m gone. I’m not sure that worries me too much – being forgotten, I mean. But it is nice to know that there will be some people after I’m gone who might have valued having me in their lives.

Still, I can’t do much about it. And I know to try to fill that void by pressuring myself or the girls (or other nieces and nephews) to intensify our relationships wouldn’t work for any of us. The best is to take it naturally, and enjoy it when it happens. Which is what I’ve been doing over the last few weeks.

Being an aunt

Being an aunt when you're living a No Kidding life can be beautiful and special and bittersweet. Being an aunt of a child with serious health issues makes it even more complicated. I watch my sister deal with the health issues every morning and evening when important and time-consuming routines that are a chore to her nine-year-old are necessary, and I watch her deal with the issues at every meal, hearing every cough, and probably every time she looks at her daughter, and feel nothing but respect for her daily battles. I take on these tasks gladly when I become the care-giver, as I was this weekend when we drove seven or so hours north to relieve my sister and brother-in-law so they could attend a conference (related to my niece's condition).

And in between the care-giving, we made a cushion together, had dinner at our niece's favourite restaurant complete with neon mocktails, played badminton on the lawn, chased a young heifer that had got loose from next door, watched her play basketball on Friday night and go on her riding lesson the next morning, saw her practice her gymnastics routine, and all the other things you do with an active nine-year-old. Then we curled up with the cat, and watched Moana together.

When we left this morning - too soon, but necessary, because we have elderly relatives at this end of the island who need care-giving too - it was with sadness that we won't see her again for a while. But there are also complicated and confused emotions, knowing that I wouldn't wish my sister's concerns on anyone, and feeling relief that I am not the one primarily bearing that burden, but also knowing that there is great joy in her role as well as great fear and sadness, and that I would have willingly born these myself, if I had had the chance.

Avalanche: A Book Review

Several weeks ago, I was sent a review copy of a new book - I don’t know the author, and have no connections with the publisher, but they’d found my blog. I was under no obligation to write a review, but when I stayed awake to 1 am to finish it, I knew I was going to do so.

Julia Leigh's Avalanche is a small book, split into two sections. The first deals with her marriage and first forays into trying to have a child with her husband. Their relationship was obviously complicated, and I couldn’t really relate to this part of the book at all. Following their divorce, the author then pursued IVF with a donor, and tells her story of the process, the reactions of those around her, and some of her own thoughts.

The author is a novelist and a film director, and she knows how to convey emotions and events. Her writing is often beautifully spare – something I envy, but can only rarely achieve. There is much unsaid in this book, subtly mentioned or only hinted at, events and conversations and observations recounted with no embellishing commentary. Having been around IVF and writing and thinking about the assisted reproduction world for a long time now, I enjoyed these subtle mentions, recognising them immediately, laughing or flinching or rolling my eyes in disgust at a simple sentence that said so much.

But, as Sarah said, there is a “shady abyss that lies between what is obvious to me and what is obvious to everyone else.” So I worry that the average reader – perhaps someone who was reading this to learn about the process, or to find out how to support someone who had been or was going through IVF – might miss these hints completely. I fear that the impact of the beautiful brevity of her words will sadly be lost, because the messages are there.

Still, for me there was a delightful feeling of being in the club, for once I could get the jokes (and weep the tears), and was in the circle.

I started trying to conceive in my mid-late 30s, and so could very much relate to some of the issues the author raised. This one in particular, made me laugh in recognition, and cringe at my naivete:

 “It seemed that every second day a celebrity in her forties was having a baby. I gratefully swallowed the evidence.”

We start to see her recognition that women without children are subject to judgement not empathy:

“In the public imagination – as I perceive it - there’s a qualified sympathy for IVF patients, not unlike that for smokers who get lung cancer. Unspoken: “You signed up for it, so what did you expect …?”

 She touches too on what drives many of us to have children, and why we feel so bereft when it doesn’t work.

“Part of me wanted to have a child just so I could have an inviolable reason for being.”

The loss so many of us feel when we can’t have children, yet which the majority of society don’t see as a loss or grief, is painfully acknowledged in this paragraph:

“I’m an expert at make-believe. Our child was not unreal to me. It was not a real child but also it was not unreal. Maybe a better way to say it is that the unknown unconceived had been an inner presence. A desired and nurtured inner presence. Not real but a singular presence in which I had radical faith.A presence that could not be substituted or replaced.”

I am also sure we could all relate to her gratitude to the doctor who referred to the embryo as “the baby,” even though she herself lists the damning statistics of the likelihood of her embryos ever being born.

It took me many years before I could say the words, “infertile” or “infertility,” so I had to laugh in recognition at this:

“Infertile. A slip of the tongue. … I wasn’t infertile I was ‘trying to get pregnant.’”

She makes the usual observations – usual for us, perhaps not for those who have never been infertile or childless by chance/circumstance – about pursuing motherhood in our modern, Western societies. I found her contrast with the Australian Torres Strait Islanders, where she noted that a “clinic on the island would almost certainly go bankrupt” to be interesting, as there was a real similarity with the Maori and Polynesian peoples here in New Zealand. Likewise, adoption seems to be equally difficult in both our countries.

She goes into some details of the process of IVF, and this would be useful for anyone – in particular I think for those who have friends or family going through this.

“An uncharitable thought ... IVF seemed to be a great deal about levels and cut-offs. If number X, then do Y. I wondered if it was the medical equivalent of conveyancing in the legal world, which is to say, largely formulaic, a matter of following protocol.”

“It seemed that only a veil of science shrouded the vast mystery.”

She talks about costs, and how suddenly $5-600 seems like nothing at all, an incidental add-on when, even though some of her costs were recoverable through Australia’s Medicare system, she was spending thousands of dollars every cycle. Then there was this one, simple sentence that says it all:

“In the parking spot reserved for Medical Practitioners Only I noticed a Bentley.”

The emotional impact of doing IVF is clear throughout the book, and she writes about not talking about IVF, and about feeling smaller, less than, “pathetic,” and about the isolation of going through this.

Finally, she acknowledges that there “… was another way out of limbo. The dark and rocky path.”

She doesn’t touch on the dark and rocky path in any detail. But she does touch on the doubt I’m sure we have all felt when first venturing out on that path.

“I tried everything. But did I? Did I really?” 

The book is subtitled A Love Story. There are at least three if not four love stories here – the one with her ex-husband, with the child she hoped to have, the ongoing love story with her nieces, and finally, rediscovering a love story with both herself and the world. I hope this acknowledgement of healing and recovery will give hope to others who may be facing the dark and rocky path – the one that, as I always say, leads up into the sun with expansive, if different, vistas.

Our relationships with other people's children

I have a blogging friend who is a fantastic teacher. I wish I'd had a teacher like her. Her students adore her, know that she listens to them and that she sees them, truly and deeply. She acknowledges their existence and treasures their uniqueness. For some of them, this is the first time they actually feel heard, feel really understood, by an adult. Their parents see them primarily as their children, not always as real, unique, human beings. Other teachers might ignore them or let them just slip by.

My friend commented that, in general, “adults don't get to know children, beyond their own children.” You can read her entire post here. It's worth it.

I have addressed this idea previously when I wrote about my relationships with my own aunts, and now with my nieces, in my post on the joy of being an aunt when you don’t have children of your own. I never had an individual, one-on-one relationship with an aunt, though as an adult, when I first moved to this city, I got to know the aunt-from-another-planet more as an individual, and I think she got to know me more too. If only she'd been around when I was younger, she could have been a great mentor. I think I needed one. 

As I've contemplated life as an aunt (in the family, or as an honorary aunt), and a never-to-be mother, and as my relationships with my nieces have grown, I've realised that this relationship is unfortunately not the norm. To have these relationships, parents need to see that there is value in it for their children. I don't always see that, and I don't want to "push in." Perhaps part of society's emphasis on the nuclear family, or the societal isolation of people without children, I find that parents can be quite possessive about their children, holding them too close, and not inviting others in. I can think of several motivations for this, but the outcome, I think, is sad for everyone.  Parents miss out on a wider support network. Children miss out on learning and growing in different ways. We miss out on sharing our experiences and love. The reality is that children have enough love for everyone. They're not going to love their parents less, simply because they love their aunts or uncles. They're going to be happy and open, and their world will expand.

So I feel rather sorry for those children who don't or have never had an aunt (or uncle) who understood them, who could mentor them, who might see the world differently than their parents, or have different experiences that she (he) could share with them. I feel sad that I can't have that relationship with more children/young people, as so many of my nieces and nephews grow up overseas. I think of friends who don't have the chance to have this relationship at all. Not all of us can. Many people will tritely say that we should surround ourselves with children, but it's not always that easy.

I feel sorry too, for the mothers who miss out on playing that role, but simply don't have the time or energy to give. A comment on my previous post noted, " Now I have my own child, I really miss my special time with my nieces and nephews."

I think too, that the relationship is a special one, because mostly, it's a role of love and joy and connection, rather than of duty, responsibility, or stress. 

I have wondered too, if in extolling the virtues of fabulous aunties, I'm just trying to boost myself, to make myself feel better about not being a mother. So I was really glad to see that my friend expressed similar thoughts to mine about adults interacting with young people - or not. Perhaps particularly, I felt pleased to see my view validated by a teacher, someone who is experienced in working with children and their parents.

(Perhaps a little sadly too, the fact that she is also a mother probably contributed to my feelings of validation. It does make me feel a little sad that, in our society today, I feel this need for validation, that I feel exposed by suggesting that an adult without kids might have a different but still close, in ways more intimate, relationship with specific children. It’s true, though - I do feel vulnerable. I choose carefully what I say about children, when I am around adults who are parents, and I choose carefully whether I even make a comment, depending on who I am with. I choose very carefully my words and phrasing, feeling so open to criticism, waiting for the hurtful comments. Yet – as I’ve written elsewhere – shouldn’t my comments be just as valid as those of any other person?)

Back to my point (and my friend’s point). Adults don’t tend to get to know children other than their own. And even then, some of them don’t really get to know their own.

My friend added,

“Can't I approach someone, some underage someone, with love and respect simply because of our shared humanity? Perhaps even more so, because we are called to protect the vulnerable.”

She didn’t say, “as a mother …” and I love her for that. She is wiser than that. I wish everyone was. She emphasised simply our shared humanity. So often, this is forgotten.

But I digress again - apologies! In our relationships with people of younger generations, perhaps as an aunt or uncle (by blood or marriage, or through friendship as an honorary aunt/uncle), I think that we are privileged to be able to hear their thoughts or dreams, their hurts and their hopes. No, it is not the same as having my own, but that's exactly the point. It's different. And it's not all about me. It's about them. If I can give them something they don't get in their relationships with other adults, then that is a privilege.

I feel very grateful to have these relationships, even if I see these special people only once a year (if that often). I’m learning, too, to feel grateful for playing a part in their lives, at a time when they need it. I'm learning not to feel hurt if our relationship alters as they grow and change and become more independent, establishing their own support networks, spreading their wings, hopefully with a little bit more wisdom or self-belief or courage as a result of my relationship with them. 

I see them. I saw them. I see them still even though they may no longer need me as much. In turn, they have seen me, too. And that really is a gift.