Your Black Aunties Will Live Forever

I’m in the armpit of summer so the cookouts smoke a-plenty — three weekends straight of graduations and anniversaries. Love and country and a Knicks championship.

I can celebrate more life by just living. I imagine my kin dearly, dollar-winin’ as our days get long and then short again. I see Brooklyn sunrises ruing the feeling that our overall day count also shortened a little.

A while ago, I was in Rahway, New Jersey with my girlfriend’s family. They’re a proud Dominican bunch with jet-fueled Spanish and thick-curled grandmothers. A mean margarita pitcher. Playful jabs with warmth wrapped around.

“I haven’t seen you in forever, mi amor. You got thick! Don’t tell me you hiding a baby under there!”

Then to me: “You know I’m the one who taught her to dress. Don’t let them tell you any different.”

A younger cousin was graduating high school. She calls them all ‘the baby.’ The baby just started sophomore year of college. That baby is driving down from D.C. to finish her med school program. The baby got married and they’re talking about having a baby!

I keep saying these ain’t babies you’re talking about and she resists.

“Everyone under 30 with no kids is a baby,” she says to me.

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