The greatest joy of my life is being doh-dah (דודה), which is Hebrew for "aunt" and what my adorable goddaughter calls me. My mom and I made the long drive to central PA last week to visit her and her family. Unfortunately, I have to be back to Berkeley before her 3rd birthday - which is Sunday - in order to start my job on Monday, but we were able to spend several days with her and celebrated her birthday early. I had kept in touch with her and her family via Skype, Facebook, email and text, but it had been 10 months since I had seen her in person. She looks essentially the same, only bigger, but she has such a little personality! Of course, she already had her own personality last summer, but oh my how it developed in a year!
Within a day or two of our arrival, my goddaughter changed her loyalties; rather than wanting to play with doh-dah, she suddenly wanted Sharon (my mom). Whereas previously she wanted to play kitchen and hide'n'seek with me, now she wanted to "hide" upstairs with my mom -- to go upstairs to her room and play. She would refuse to let me enter, telling me she didn't want me and to go away. I may have stooped to holding Baby (her favorite doll) hostage so she would let me in. (Low, I know, but I was desperate for time with my little girl!) Despite only wanting to play with Sharon, it was still doh-dah who got called on to go "tinkle" or when she had "snots" or even when she "did a stinky" in her nap-time diaper. Sharon was not allowed to participate in any of these activities. It was all doh-dah. This included multiple trips to the bathroom during meals -- particularly twice during birthday cheesecake, during the ice cream social and four times at Long Horn (most of which were false alarms).
When I commented about my goddaughter only wanting me for all the less-than-pleasant tasks but not wanting me to play with her, her mother (my seminary classmate) said, "Welcome to motherhood." I tried to point out that I am not a mother, just doh-dah, but that didn't really change the facts. And despite my protests, I really didn't mind. I loved being part of the potty-training process and was so proud of how well she did. Her parents even joked that if she reverted when I left, they were going to make me come back because she did such a good job for doh-dah. It was even cute how she would blow her nose! Of course I wanted to play with her, and I did get to play with her quite a bit, but it really touched me how she wanted me to take her to go potty and all that.
I am not a mother, and I don't know if I will ever be a mother. I love kids, have always love them and always wanted kids, but one thing being doh-dah has taught me is that one does not need to be a parent to have kids. Being doh-dah, being a godmother, is a big responsibility -- helping make sure my goddaughter grows up into a beautiful, happy, well-mannered woman -- but being doh-dah has given me at least as much as I have given my goddaughter. Being doh-dah has taught me how to live and how to love, how to put another life before my own, how to be a person worth imitating, how to just be. I am in a PhD program, I have been in school for something like 23 years, and I have learned a lot in the classroom, but the real lessons in life, the ones that really matter, are taught elsewhere, in the course of living -- in the course of being doh-dah.
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