Last month, I got to take a couple of days to go down to Knoxville for the Air Supply concert, and to be able to see my niece. Hallie is a grad student at UTK, and I usually only see her when our paths cross in Johnson City, so it was nice just to be able to have dinner and catch up. I am amazed at how grown up she is because I swear, I am not that old! She’s turned into a beautiful 21 year old, but I don’t know how… I mean, I am over here, still looking like I’m in my mid 30s!
I spent much of Hallie’s childhood living nearby, so I saw her all the time back then, before she started school and then as she went through elementary school. Back then, I became Aunt Dreamy because it sounded like she was saying my name with a “DR” sound at the beginning of it. I used to read to her at night when she went to bed, and since she was born while I was living in Naples, I gave her a couple of Italian children’s books, which were always the ones I read to her because I was the only one who could. When we read the counting book, she would count along with me, learning one through ten easily. The teens are a little tougher because, unlike the English language, most European languages don’t make up whole new words for the numbers beyond ten. Most become compound words meaning “one and ten”, two and ten”, and so forth. Hallie used to get excited when we would get to the page with fifteen sheep on it because something about that word – “quindici” – made her happy!
She was always quick witted, and you couldn’t put much past her. For her 5th birthday, she had a Disney Princess party , and because I was the aunt who could never say “no” (Can anyone say “SUCKER?!), I arrived, dressed in a long, curly red wig and an Ariel costume. As soon as she opened the door, all the little girls in their Disney Princess finery, shouted “ARIEL!” All, except for Hallie, who said, “You’re my Aunt Dreamy!” Fortunately, the peer pressure was too much and she soon forgot that I was Aunt Dreamy, and just for the afternoon, I became Ariel in her eyes.
Now, that little girl who used to dance her heart out on stage, the little girl who loved to go Jeeping and listen to our Jeepin’ songs together, who always begged me to drive the roadster faster, faster, faster, and who loved to be read to at night by either Steve or Shana or, if I was over that night, me, is so grown up, living in a nice downtown apartment, killing it in school, and yes, even humoring her old Aunt Dreamy by going to a concert where the stars could have been her grandfathers (her words, not mine!). She did know two of the songs, but mostly, she just took a ton of pictures and video for me so that I could really get into the show since we were sitting in the front row. She’s a Swiftie, and I told her they call us “Airheads”.
Being able to spend that time with her – just the two of us – was something really special for me, and it meant so much that she was willing and able to go to the show with me. It reminded me of what it was like before Connor came along, when it was just me and her in my little two-seater convertible, cruising around the neighborhoods in our south Georgia town checking out “CRAZY Christmas lights”, and her telling me about the mean goose at the pond in my subdivision. She would giggle and her face would scrunch up when she was particularly amused at something. Of course, as we grow older, we change some of our mannerisms into more mature, grown-up mannerisms, and Hallie is no different, but every once in a while, when she’s caught off-guard, she will still scrunch up her face and giggle like that little girl inside of her.
I’m excited to see where she goes in the future, but I do miss that little hand in mine while walking across a parking lot or that little giggle when we both shouted out, “QUINDICI!” I miss that little girl who once asked her mom if I had a husband and when Shana told her that I didn’t, she said, “Well, she needs to get one.” I miss that little girl who adored Grubby so much when she first met him that when he was going to stop by on his way out of town, she ran in to put on a dress for him. This beautiful, fiery soul has such moxie, but I am still amazed at how grown up she is… at least one of us is! Like I said in the beginning, I am not that old… but I’m old enough to be an Airhead!
💙
Very Nice