Roxanne K. Cottell

Every now and then, people come into our lives. Sometimes they stay. Somtimes they don't.

Napua is my kid sister.

 

 

 

 

Napua is a golfer. She ain't Michelle Wie, but her game's not too shabby.

 

My kids adore her.

She was only 7 when Jeremy was born. She was excited that she was going to be someone's aunty.

 " Do I get to look at the baby, Mama?" she asked my mother the day the boy was born.

 

She was 11 when Gracie was born. She was happy that she was at the hospital and got to see Grace when the baby was only 20 minutes old.

"It's a girl! It's a girl! I can't wait to play tea party with her! I can't wait to give her all my Barbies!"

 

She was there, holding my hand and watching Joshua come into the world. The thrill of a new baby was different this time. She was older and wiser and more responsible, having learned the privileges that come with being there for another person, for loving another person so completely, without thinking about it. The circle had been completed. All those things that I felt for her when she was a baby, then a little girl, and now almost completely grown, were finally understood by her. All those things that I taught her, all those things that I had hoped she had understood when I said them to her were all in play at that very unique moment in time when a person meets a brand new life, just seconds old, not even able to see or hear clearly. Yet you know that they are fully aware that they are safe and that this person who is talking to them would die so that they might live.

 It was all so clear, right then, in that perfect, brand new moment.

 "I'm your aunty," she said to the wiggling little creature in her arms who she greeted into the world with a hug and a kiss and a smile, "and I love you."

 

 

This past June 16th, Napua graduated from high school. I worried that she wouldn't  call me as much as she did on June 15, 2005.

This is the middle of July, 2005. My kid sister calls me almost everyday.

She still has a boyfriend. She still wants a chihuahua.

She still watches Blue's Clues.

 

 

She still calls me.

Everyday.

 

The song you are currently hearing is Keali'i Reichel's Melelana...

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