Free Going to the Chapel by Janet Tronstad Page B

didn’t realize what I was doing when I left that party until Cassie explained it.”
    He actually sounds sincere.
    “What did Cassie say exactly?”
    “Nothing that I shouldn’t have figured out if I’d been thinking. I hadn’t realized that you had been raised by your aunt.”
    “That’s not a big deal.” I don’t like people knowing my mother left me so I don’t go around announcing the fact that my aunt Inga had to raise me instead. Still, it’s nothing for Doug to worry about.
    “It is a big deal,” Doug says. “I know. I was raised by my aunts, too, so I know something about how that feels. It’s always made me a little touchy about things like family get-togethers.”
    “Oh.” I’m not so sure I want to share the same problem with Doug. It’s not so easy to be angry with someone if you share even one trouble with them.
    “I know your situation was different because you got to stay with just one of your aunts,” he says.
    I’m glad he realizes we didn’t really have the same problem. “My aunt Inga is great.”
    “That’s what Cassie said. I rotated between three of my aunts.”
    Wow, I had never thought about it, but that is what could have happened to me. There was nothing that required Aunt Inga to keep me full-time. She could have asked Aunt Ruth to take me part of the year and Aunt Gladys to take me the other part. I wouldn’t have known where I was living if that had happened. Besides, I would have felt torn apart. The only thing I know of that the aunts would have all agreed on was that it was such a shame my mother was wasting her life and neglecting her duty to me. Imagine hearing that from three different households, two of which viewed you as only halfway part of their family.
    “So maybe you can understand why I didn’t do so good talking to your aunt,” Doug says. “I was telling her the truth when I said I had a thing about commitments. Even the word makes me uptight. And all those relatives there.”
    My mind has already left the problems of Elaine’s party. Now that I know our problems weren’t completely the same, I am starting to feel a little compassion for Doug. “Where did you even keep your clothes? With all that moving around?”
    I know from my own experience how important clothes and stuff are when you’re going to school.
    “I usually just kept my suitcase packed.”
    “Wow.” I guess I can see why he’d have a commitment problem. “But shouldn’t all of that moving around have made you the reverse? Shouldn’t you want to be committed to someone? I mean not me. But someone with a closet.”
    “You would think so.” Doug chuckles. “I think I’m a little all over the place with it, but I’m working on it. And, just so you know, I’m grateful the aunts took me in when my parents died. I don’t know where else I would have gone.”
    “I know the gratitude, too,” I say. Those of us who are raised by relatives are the almost lost ones. We owe so much to those who took us in when they didn’t have to do anything. “And the guilt.”
    “Yeah,” Doug says.
    I can’t help but put myself in Doug’s place. What would I have done if none of the aunts had wanted me? My aunt Inga never made me feel unwelcome, but I was always aware that I might be holding up her life in some way. Aunt Inga was still young when she took me in. I wondered if she would have gone and done something different than work for Aunt Ruth if she didn’t have me to worry over. I owe Aunt Inga big-time for all she did for me. And I wasn’t even part of her family, not in the way Elaine and the other cousins were.
    Most people would agree a mother or father is required to take care of their child; an aunt really doesn’t need to care for a niece or nephew. And, in my case, I’m a half niece, so there was even less obligation. I have always wanted Aunt Inga to see me at my best just so she knows she didn’t waste her time for all those years.
    “It must have been tough to lose