Chocolates galore couriered just now on Easter Saturday -
Guess who sent that for her baby brother & her niece of thirtysomething?

It was from the woman who also caught wind that the intensive care nurse was pregnant. That was on the worst day when no one knew where the hell to put ourselves after a meeting. I just sat beside her in those two discussions that day like a stunned mullet. I didn't want to distract her from listening to what the specialist had to say, by reaching out to her right then. I wanted my arm to go around her, or to at least hold her hand. The other special uncle I have, her deftly analytical drainage engineer brother, was sobbing as usual - it's usually him or me. I only want to write enough to impart that that day was just a horrible big daze - it was just ghastly. That's paraphrasing her words, and those are enough. I'm glad we had got down there just the night before, and I wish only to indicate with my writing as to how upset we all were and how we all needed each other. It probably more than suffices to just write further that the reason we were all in that hospital family room was unexpected and not quite for what I had started to believe we could forget about preparing ourselves for. She still organized a baby present before the nurse went off duty that day. How she made sure of that in the midst of everything else is beyond me.

When I was a kid, she was the one who'd drop everything to jump into the ambulance to ride in with any of her elderly neighbours if they wanted her to. With my uncle and parents out of town, I remember that she once had to pull that other brother out from work to sit with me while she was helping out. I grew up thinking that's how we all pitched in when we could. She knew exactly who else in the neighbour's family to contact. She'd then return and rush me around to visit my friends, buy me some new shoes, take me for a haircut or something like that. As usual, we'd be laughing 'til it hurt, saying something rude of whatever we came across along the way.

She'd likely be the one to call next door again that night to do something like make sure there was enough beds and bedding if a whole crowd had arrived.

My aunt says that all the brains in her family went to her brothers. I think otherwise.

My uncle just stepped-up his support of my aunt more on occasion when others said she was doing too much just anywhere she thought she could be of help. He understood her more than that and I think he was only too pleased to do some of his bit for others through her. Beyond that, family was just a part of them. I thought of her signing her name without his for the first time on that Easter card.

I can remember him often giving me a separate Easter Bunny of delectably very rich chocolate made at a factory nearby his warehouse, in addition to what came from them both.

When I was in hospital once, it was his idea to send me some lovely orchids so that I wouldn't suspect that my aunty was flying up as soon as she could to see me as well. There's a twist in being spoilt rotten when you're also brought up to wish that everyone knows that feeling I did when seeing her, and remembering how she, Nana, and other aunties, uncles and cousins with their friends, as well as my parents, would always be walking through the door to my bedside loaded up with books, puzzles and toys for me and any other kids around me when I was younger. Some people have never been as lucky. Some have in different ways again. I also remember walking down so many hospital corridors with her, to visit others. That was part of my life - sometimes it was sad and scary and it put my heart in my mouth over what was happening, but often fun and interesting and my father would explain a lot to me that those outside the family didn't think a kid could be told. It is with what was given to me, that allows me to take a lot of the world in. It was my hope, that with all that, I could give to others too.

Never in her life would my aunt think about being any rolemodel or setting any example or of how much she's taught us at all. She'd quickly tell you to go and get knotted, I think, if you tried to approach her in that way.

I went away on trips with my them at least during every summer and thoroughly loved every minute of such holidays. There's usually another family trip too, that we all go on, meeting up somewhere. Even given my enjoyment, it took someone else to point out how something that was so normal for me had said so much. It was all why I couldn't be influenced by those who didn't know what I had had all my life, and who implied that I possibly would find the people like those I loved as being individualistic, hard, cold, clinical, unapproachable - Dad and my uncles initially were the ones who took me to see rock stratifications and other geomorphological features wherever we went, petrified trees, birds, observatories, wind turbines, ruins, pa sites, pueblos, canyons, seals, forests, mountains, rivers, somewhere to swim all day..., and then the Levi's jean factory seconds shop in Taihape! My love of science and nature has all been about sensitivity to what was around me right from the word go, not about the white lab coats that Dad's friends at his work all just happened to wear as they lifted me up to look at what they were curing, say. This uncle and aunty of mine were sort of like the support team for the rest of us nerds...

Although encouraged to question just about everything else, I wasn't really raised to question the point of caring.

I don't know if these words really pin down what I've tried to write here. Maybe anyone who tries similar also invariably ends up with patronizing scribble. I know some people just have to stay working all day, barely making ends meet, and would dearly love to be of more support for others - but just cannot. Reading other pages of mine may show that what I really always had to draw upon, I forgot I had, and it was unseen by others who had no clue of all I had available to build upon. They encouraged me in ways other than what really was in tune with life's relevancy for me. What always had given my life meaning wasn't necessarily about family, nor restricted to humans, although it may sound like it. I could only remember very faintly what I had wanted so much to be flowing without thinking about it. That was up until a few weeks before we had to rush back home.*

It proved so natural again to be around those I love, even in times of stress. This was as we very sadly said goodbye to one in our midst who helped us always be as close as we are.

I snuggled into her nice soft warm jacket she threw around me and told me to keep, as some of us took the kids for a walk. Maybe the kids actually took us. None of us knows how it all really works, but I trust that we all have been taught a bit somehow.

Upon returning from our walk, there was a number of the cars of my uncle's lifelong friends now lining the street. My senses were heightened, and there was love, an incredible warmth and memories all over the place as well as the usual organizational chaos. I suddenly remembered my uncle mumbling about how we wouldn't be able to organize a certain activity in a brothel when we'd all go off intending to meet up somewhere with phone batteries flat, the wrong maps, and with the food and his beer left in the car parked the furtherest away. I could still hear him with us lamenting at what a useless family we all were. He'll never really leave.