Neenah

There are two people who call me Auntie. One is five years old, the other is twenty-two and my nephew by virtue of marriage to my poet.

When my nephew H was born in Australia in 2001, I was overwhelmed by the strangest feeling – suddenly there was someone in this world who I hadn’t met yet, didn’t know, and yet I loved him, intensely.

Meeting him, when he was almost two, was wonderful but meeting him the second time, Christmas 2003, when he remembered me and led me out of the airport chattering away, was very special. He’d bought me a present, a Christmas tree ornament that matched one he’d bought for his own tree, apparently in the shop he was very insistent that his parents buy two, one for me and one for him. That year he could talk a little bit, and he had a special word he only used with me – neenah. He would come up to me (or climb up on me) and look right in my face, ‘Anne, neenah. Neenah.’ When we asked him what ‘neenah’ meant, he wouldn’t answer, until right at the end of my visit, literally at the airport, when I asked him again. ‘H, what does neenah mean?’ ‘Mmmm…….happy’, came the reply. I think he also bit me on the shoulder, but that was later. And I was leaving, so it was justified assault.

The postage I’ve spent on that child – letters and parcels and kids’ magazines and postcards so he doesn’t forget he has an auntie who lives pretty far away but loves him a lot – could probably sort out my overdraft, but that’s another post.

Last year my mother asked him if he remembered ‘neenah’ and he looked blank. When I was there, again for Christmas, I said ‘neenah’ to him one day, to see if there was a reaction. ‘Neenah’, he repeated, a huge grin lighting up his face.

You could say we have a bond.

Postscript: I have a new Australian niece or nephew due in November, and I won’t meet him/her until next year (hopefully once the squally red newborn stage is over). I’m looking forward to being an aunt again.