Thursday, June 24, 2010

Fairy God-Auntie

I've been neglecting this blog lately because, I'm pleased to report, I've been living the heck out of life.

Right now I'm sitting in the Burbank airport after a week-long visit to Aunt Jane. It was a top-notch vacation: beach time, lots of LA tourist stuff, visiting Great Aunt Mabel, lots of driving around with the top down, ice cream, shopping, vegging on the couch, hotel therapy, my first experience of room service ever (it was as decadent as I imagined), the wild animal park in San Diego, Universal Studios.

And as an added bonus, I'm also coming back with my regular life in better shape than when I left. For one, I'm much better dressed, thanks to unabashed spoiling on AJ's part; I've also had lunch with a woman who works in the field I'm considering; had heart-to-hearts; been turned on to a new unresolved sexual tension TV character relationship to become obsessed with; have two high-quality free gift lip sticks and a lip gloss; learned many important tricks to employ on my mac; and have been proffered a place to host my future celebrant web site for free.

As if all of this wasn't enough: Before I left for California I called AJ for advice about a hairy problem related to last summer's illness/insurance debacle as well as me being a frightened disorganized lunatic at the time. She just told me to bring the whole sickening pile of files with me and we'd sort it out together.

Far beyond the call of duty, she just up and made the whole problem go away. I get choked up typing about it. I feel like the word gratitude is totally insufficient to express what I feel.

The Twin and I have talked about this feeling, like for example, at Christmas when you get too many really great presents and you just think "I can't! It's too much! I'm not worthy!" - the feeling of gratitude being almost too much to tolerate.

I think the Twin and I decided that the best way to deal with it is just to be grateful and strive to make your actions consistent with someone who is worthy of that scale of generosity...and also resolve to pay it forward at the earliest opportunity. In AJ's case it's long been established that the older and more decrepit she becomes, the more loyal and devoted I will become, in turn. I can only hope for an opportunity to be a fairy god-niece in turn.

As AJ said when I tried to express some of these thoughts to her, she said "We're family. It's what we do."

Probably most of the world's problems are caused by the fact that not everyone has a family like mine.

To conclude, I offer this excerpt from the lyrics of "If You're Going Through Hell, keep on Going" by Rodney Adkins:

But the good news
Is there's angels everywhere out on the street
Holding out a hand to pull you back up on your feet

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

AJ's the best.

But spill, it, what's our new TV show????

M

Oscar LeGrouche said...

Awwww.

xxoo

AJ