These are the Aunties
A few months ago all us Gottliebs were in New York City for Snowpocalypse ’11. The last night we were there I had a handful of friends meet for drinks at the hotel while Mr G and the kids hung out and watched a movie. As I was preparing to go down to the bar Alexander was taking out his contact lens.
Or at least he was trying to. His eyes were so dry from the cold and wind that he was having a real struggle, and since neither Mr G nor I have ever worn contact lenses we had no experience to draw on. I sent out a tweet.
Help, Alexander can’t get his lens out, what do we do?
Of course Mel showed up 15 minutes later with eye drops. Not just any old eye drops either, it was her favorite brand and everyone swore that she was absolutely right they are the best.
So I excused myself and ran upstairs to put drops in Alexander’s eyes. Mr G waited five more minutes, put a second set of drops in, and then waited a few minutes after that to have Alexander take the lens out.
Except it wouldn’t come out.
By then there were a dozen fabulous New Yorkers that I was dying to get some time with and I was feeling a little put out when Mr G showed up at the bar to tell me that Alexander really needed my help. Thankfully Emily was there and headed up to the suite with me.
Emily showed Alexander how to push on the sides of his eyes to release a particularly sticky lens. She was patient with him, removing her own lens multiple times, and holding a mirror for Alexander so he could take care of his own.
I stood there feeling incredibly lucky that my children have a community of women that will help them when I can’t.
Those are the aunties.
Emily, Mel, Melanie and I were talking about poor Alexander and his eyes. I kept saying how very very lucky he was that Emily and Mel were there to help him, and Melanie said, “You know I just wrote a book about that.”
And she did. Melanie Notkin wrote a wonderful book for all the women in a child’s life. If you’re lucky enough to have family nearby you know how important they are. If you’ve moved away from your families then the non genetic Auntie just might be the lady who makes everyone’s life better.
If you’re an Auntie (or a mom) you’ll love this book. Melanie has chapters for everything from swaddling baby to 529 plans. It doesn’t go on sale until April 26, but I’m going to give one away here.
To enter leave a comment below and/or tweet a link to this post, two entries are fine, but no more than one comment and one tweet will count as entries. I’ll use a random number generator to pick a winner at noon on April 24.