A Silent Hope

I am home in Missouri for one week, and it has been wonderful.  I have spent time visiting friends and family, but I have also spent time just sitting at home.  Listening to the never ending mutter of the television in the background while Aunt Bonnie putters around the house doing her daily chores, coming home to see my laundry lovingly folded and left on my bed, looking out the back window at the never changing scene I saw every morning through my adolescence, hearing the cows lowing in the background, even just the smell of the house is comforting...it is home. 

Yesterday morning I was reading a book in the living room when my Uncle Jim came in and half apologized for not making my vacation more 'exciting' I smiled and told him this was just perfect.  A quiet morning, a slow afternoon just being with two of my greatest supporters... if that is not a vacation from the rush and grind of every day life, I certainly don't know what is. 

My Aunt and Uncle, the second parents in my life who provided me a framework of support to grow into the strong and semi-confident woman I have become. (I say semi-confident because I am still working on that addition of my particular self)  Their willingness to take me in as their own at the perfect moment in my life when I needed a steady and unchanging home, it irrevocably changed the very fabric of my being.  Please know that in praising their love to me I do not want to diminish the importance of my own parents in my life, that is not at all the case.  My Aunt and Uncle simply added to the support and love my parents gave.  They were my parents at a time when I needed physical security and limitations.  They were able to provide for me the constant security that my parents were, at that time, unable to provide.

I have always known that my Aunt and Uncle took me in and loved me as their own daughter, but the magnitude of it did not hit me until this morning, sitting here typing in my Aunt's office.  Parents live forever eternally hoping for the best for and from their children.  Even when all hope of something seems to be gone to everyone else involved, a parent silently hopes for the best outcome.  Perhaps they make a comment here and there, perhaps they say nothing at all.  Years and decades may pass, but they do not give up hoping.  I have always known the love I felt from my Aunt and Uncle....but that silent hope (I believed) was reserved for their own children. 

Years ago I was playing around looking through my Aunt's books of wedding cakes. (she makes beautiful wedding cakes)  Half joking I told her exactly what cake I wanted when I got married 'someday'.  I didn't ever think twice about it and, thus far, have never needed a reason to consider the cake again.  Marriage has not been something that has happened for me and (90%) of the time is not even something I think about.  It happens for some, it hasn't for me so far. 

This morning as I began to play with facebook I happened to glance at the calendars my Aunt has hanging on the back of her desk.  As I was looking I saw a small post it that was quite curious.  All it said was: Book #7, Pg #70, Laura's.  What in the world did that mean?  It looked like my handwriting, but I couldn't think what it might be in reference to.  Then all at once it dawned on me....it's my wedding cake. 

My Aunt never talks to me about marriage, she doesn't needle me with questions of who if anyone I am dating. (she leaves that to my father)  But here tucked away in her desk was a sign of her silent hope.  That someday she might be able to make me that cake.  That she has not written off that kind of happiness for me.  That I am to her a special daughter who she will silently support and hope for just as her very own.  It is such a good feeling to love and be loved, to not be given up on no matter what.