
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, August 8, 1994                   TAG: 9409020012
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AUNT ANXIETY

OVER THE weekend, I had one niece and three of the nephews, a family of kids ranging in age from nearly 9 to just-turned 3. We played with the computer, took bumpy rides in the truck, watched a couple of videos. And, of course, we walked in the woods.

Part of the point of our walk (at least, to my way of thinking) was to survey the damage done by the winter's ice storms. And then to admire (in the face of said damage) the repairs to the path that the Man of the House and I have recently accomplished.

"Look over there," I started our walk saying. "See all the really huge branches we had to move? The trunks we had to chain-saw?"

"Oh, yeah," they limply replied.

Finally, I gave up. What concerns me holds merely minimum fascination for them. The 3-year-old was too interested in the vari-colored mushrooms sparkling the path; the 5-year-old too worried about the slick soles of her shoes; the 7-year-old too curious about the flowers; and the 9-year-old too involved in flinging sticks. How could they possibly notice my downed trees?

But then, we reached the splayed-out poplar.

New poplars will sometimes grow from the stumps of old trees. And this had happened deep in our woods, where, before the ice storms, four massive trees stood in a clump around a rotted stump. This winter, the ice so weighted the trees that all four fell, opening out from their common stump like the spokes of a wheel.

"Wow! Look at that!" the 9-year-old exclaimed, as soon as we rounded a turn in the path.

Then he leapt to one of the trunks and started walking out it, balancing like a lumberjack, disappearing from my view.

"Come back here!" I called, in my best stern aunty voice. "Be careful! Don't get lost!"

"Hey," he called back, fading into the trees, "I'm a kid. I'm supposed to get lost a few times in my life."

Oh dear.

Isn't that the truth?

What's a poor aunt to do?

In the space of a breath, the 3-year-old was following his big brother out the log. "Don't!" I started. Then, amended myself. "Don't you need any help?"

At least you? I was asking in my heart. The baby? Don't you need me, at least?

"Nope," he assured me. "I can do it myself." And he did.

Children require a mysterious, precarious balancing act of the adults who weave and bob around them: one minute, protective and reassuring; the next minute, not quite there.

I'm just an aunt. I can't keep up. Between their visits with me, the children gain whole worlds of maturity. I'm never quite prepared for all the changes. And so they chafe (I know they do) under my too-close ministrations. "I can do it!" they have to keep reminding me. And still, I pepper every conversation with much too frequent "Be carefuls" and "Don't get hurts."

But we're looking at different things in the world, they and I. We're walking quite different paths. To my way of thinking, they're constantly at risk, needy, vulnerable. To their way of thinking ...

Well, they'll wear as much independence as I'll allow. And more.

Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.

by CNB