Get Yourself A Fairy Godmother

Today I talked with Sharon for nearly three hours. 

"AUNTIE Sharon" is what she'll say to that sentence. Yes, Aunt Sharon, in that she is one of Louie's little sisters (there's a load of other aunts). But Lou is my mother's husband, not my "bio dad" nor my "on paper" father at all, and regarding that fact, the Lombardi family (including those other five aunts) never let me forget it. Not for a day. Except for Sharon. Beautiful, sweet-smelling, musical and creative, Sharon was the first "grown woman" that I knew, besides my mom, that carried a kind of tanglible energy. I don't know if there's an English word for it, but it's like a light...it's a kind of light of love...it's a luminous energy that women know how to exude, and receive, and carry forward to other women. It happens when we hand someone a tampon in the ladies room, or when we catch each others' eyes across a crowded train whenever one of these guys starts acting up (y'all know what I'm saying.) It's how your friend takes your kids after school so you don't go insane if you hear "mom? mom? mom?" one more time, and how your sister-in-law instinctively knows you will take care of her baby. It is like a luminous energy river flowing. So when I was a little girl, Sharon is the first female person, who wasn't my mom, and in fact bore zero relation to me in any way at all, whose flow joined mine, wordlessly. She danced with us, she colored and drew pictures with us. She introduced me to music, art and books that I still own today. Even though I was just the deformed, unwashed little runt that Lou's latest "girl of the week" brought around the house, Sharon had my back, even though she was, actually, just a girl herself.  A teenager when her big brother knocked up my mother, who herself had been a teenager when she'd had me. They were all so young that it boggles the mind to consider what life was like? When Michael was born, Sharon became his cummari. That's pronounced "goomba" and it's Sicilian for "godmother." Michael called her Auntie Sharon. I called her Sharon ("AUNTIE!") but what she won't know until she reads this is that I thought of her as my godmother, too. Because her flow of strong energy was so tangible to me, I knew, if anything ever happened to my mom, Sharon would have taken care of me, too. The Lombardi family made sure I didn't forget I was not a blood relative, but the covenant of a woman's love has nothing to do with blood. Thank you, Sharon. ("AUNTIE.").  ⾎

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