The "almost mom"

I almost have a daughter. She's my niece and her mother is my twin sister. When she's around me a lot, she starts to call me "Mommy" and eventually doesn't even get embarrassed by it. Julia is her name, my namesake. My sister calls us "the Julias" as in "here come the Julias." Julia prefers that I go by "Julie" so she can be the only Julia. That's fine by me. I just can't get those grown-ups to stop calling me Julia. And I can't stop thinking of myself that way, having been trained to be "Julia" for more than a decade. Somehow, when I started at City Harvest 13 years ago, I stopped resisting the insistence of others on calling me by my official, formal, birth certificate name. And now it's in my blood. A little crazy-making sometimes, to be both Julia and Julie. I think I'm used to it because I've so often been called by my sister's name. But really I just get confused myself.

The only time I don't get confused is when Julia calls me "Mommy." I know I'm not her Mommy. I've never had anyone call me Mommy, so it's not familiar to me. That name belongs to my Mommy, to my sister, to my sisters-in-law, to my friends and relatives. Never to me. All the more reason I enjoy it when Julia mis-calls me. I'm so clear that I'm not her Mommy, I'm her Auntie. There's no confusion in my mind, no question over what I would prefer, because there's no option or choice on my part. I don't have to make any decision. All I have to do is laugh with her and move on. It's comfortable. If I were her Mommy, we'd have a different relationship. And I love this one.