My Niece, Jane Austen

If everything goes according to plan, later today our home will be graced by the lithe and rose-scented presence of my niece, Jane Austen. (She doesn't actually smell like roses but she looks like she would).

Jane Austen (whose real name is Emma Rose but I call her Emma Louise and always have and don't know why) is one of my favorites. She used to be my absolute favorite but then she came to this area for college and despite promises never, ever ONCE made it over here on Friday nights for pizza-and-a-movie and so there has been room for others to challenge her preeminence. And that's the chance you take when you don't come over for pizza and a movie when you could.

Jane used to come for weekend visits when she was very wee and The Spouse and I were just starting out. She was a little, tiny faerie thing with a large imagination and a sweet heart. She loved her Auntie Raine. I dare say, she even worshipped me just a bit, the way small children do when they take it in their heads to love someone who isn't their mother or father. Now, I think she still loves me but at the age of nearly 21, she no longer worships me. The serious arse-kicking she gave me playing Guitar Hero recently was indication enough of that.

Jane is the first of the Next Generation to complete a 4 year college degree. She has a job and her own apartment and a very nice boyfriend (who turned her on to "Battlestar Galactica" - so you can imagine how I feel about him). She's also impossibly pretty. She reminds me of myself at that age (except that she has a much nicer boyfriend than I did and I wasn't as impossibly pretty). She left home young to go to college, she has begun to make a life for herself away from her family, she is bright and funny and sassy - which can sometimes be read as rebellious or "worldly" or some other thing that frightens people but she isn't. She is a classic good girl, with the sense to be a good girl because she knows that will profit her more than being a bad girl. In other words, she is making good choices and I, for one, applaud them.

I am fairly certain her parents are proud of her but they necessarily worry. She's the first of their brood to leave home and that is never a thoroughly easy thing. Turns out that momentous moment- the one you've been building toward all those years- is the point where you, as a parent, wonder if you did enough right, covered enough bases, to really and truly fit your child for life in the big, cruel world. I'm starting to think that birds have a much easier time of it, what with that whole just-pushing-em-out-of-the-nest-and-starting-a-whole-new-brood thing.

But human parents have to do more than regurgitate worms and teach babies to fly. And as hard as all those lessons are when we have the little buggers under our roof, I'm beginning to understand even more how tough it is to actually stand by and watch to see if the lessons hold.

And you know, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. That's the other reality. You do all you can and it's either going to take or not. In the end, those offspring of ours are their own people and at some point their choices are theirs alone.

I do not know how I got off on that tangent. Point is, if The Child turns out as well as Jane, I will sleep very well at night.

Another thing, which I only recently realized about my relationship with Jane, is that I have a relationship with her, which is to say I seek out talking to her and being with her for her own sake. Yes, we know each other and have history because we could theoretically donate one another a kidney, but Jane stands up to the ultimate test: If she weren't kin and I met her at a party I would still want to hang with her. I don't have a relationship like that with any of my blood aunties (who are all perfectly lovely people, mind) although I know Dame Judi has one like that with at least one of her nieces. Which is only to say it's nothing to do with a generational thing or the like. Some people, I suppose, are just meant to be friends and if they happen to be introduced to you by way of family genetics, so be it.

Point is, Jane Austen is a superfantastic person and I'm looking forward to another Guitar Hero beating because even in the midst of my humiliation, I will be laughing and talking with someone I love very much.