I got a message today from Aunty Cindy, wishing me and my family happy holidays. In the message, she told me that Pen was now in her first year of Uni. That message and thinking about how old Pen is now just makes me feel incredibly nostalgic, and also makes me just marvel at how all the time has passed. My two girls are now roughly the same age as Pen and Viv were, when I first met them back in 2009.
I first met Aunty Cindy, Uncle Bill, and their two girls when I went to London to study. They had lived in London for the longest time, and I had never met my Dad's cousin before that. Even after my Dad left, I'd meet up with them every once in a while, navigating the shitty TFL weekend transit links, to make my way to their place around the Finchley Road area. Once for a week, I even babysat Pen and Viv, when their nanny went back to the Caribbean for a vacation home.
My memories of my time spent with them over the 3 years come in little blips and blobs. Viv around 2 years old, covering herself with a sheet and pretending to be a ghost and running around, before smacking full force into a piano, and my incredulous response when Uncle Bill and Aunty Cindy just cracked up in laughter before consoling their upset child (I am now in this same school of parenting). Pen talking about how she wanted to buy a truck when she grew up, so she could transport her art work and supplies around easily. The two girls bamboozling me into reading them entire books at bedtime (when Uncle Bill came home, he said they usually only read a few pages). The feeling I had when I picked Pen up from school, waiting with all the nannies, and making sure I had adequate snacks (grapes) for the journey back to their home. Viv running Thomas the Tank Engine up all my arms and my head, until my hair got stuck wound tight around the train, and Aunty Cindy had to cut me free. Watching them brush their teeth, and then eating the toothpaste afterwards instead of gargling and spitting it out (I now see this with E of course, kids toothpaste and all that).
My interactions with Pen and Viv were my first real meaningful interactions with children as an adult. Watching and learning from Uncle Bill and Aunty Cindy also provided frameworks for how I have ended up deciding to parent (largely chilled out, the kids will be fine). And at the same time all 4 of them provided an anchor for me in London as I learned how to become a young adult and navigate my own mental health.
Since leaving London in 2012, I haven't seen the girls at all. A few years after that Aunty Cindy sent something that included a picture of the girls, and I stuck it up over my desk in Singapore. In 2017, Uncle Bill came to my wedding in in New York City, and a few years later Aunty Cindy came to visit NYC, and Jon and I met up for a meal with her then. Messages and emails go back and forth ever so often, but it wasn't until today that I really stopped and realised that 10 years has passed since I've been in London, and seen them all in person. I am grateful that Aunty Cindy always remembers to message, especially when I forget and feel like I'm in the thick of things.
