💙💙
"Uncle, I love seeing you laugh so much these days. Whoever gets to be your kid someday is gonna be the luckiest."
"You… what are you even talking about?” I mumbled, suddenly super awkward. And out of nowhere, my eyes started doing that weird stinging thing. Like I got tap water in them. Definitely not crying.
"If there’s a second life, I wanna come back as your mom."
"Uh!" My brain just blue screened, total system crash. I had zero words. "W-why? Are you not happy being my niece or something?"
This 9-year-old kid sighs like a grandma with overdue bills. Like, the heaviest sigh you’ve ever heard.
"It’s not that. I just wanna take care of you more, like Grandma and Mom do."
Oh My God.
What kind of conversation is this?
For a second I completely forgot I was talking to a literal child. Where does she even get this stuff? She’s out here thinking about my well-being more than I think about my well-being.
"So Uncle, if I ever get a boyfriend, I want one like Dad, Grandpa, or you."
I nearly choked on my drink.
"What did you just say?" I blurted out. I was not ready for whatever this conversation was about to be.
"Dad never makes me cry. Grandpa never lets me go hungry. And you… all the boys at school are terrified of you."
"Whoa whoa whoa, time out! Are you roasting me right now? Why are Dad and Grandpa the good guys, and I’m just… the school’s final boss?" I said, my ego officially wounded.
"Don’t get mad yet. It’s because you’re scary that the boys stopped picking on me. You’re the only one who actually walked up and told that annoying kid to knock it off. Dad and Grandpa just talked to his parents and the teacher."
Her answer was so simple, so honest, it melted me on the spot.
"So… you’re proud to have an uncle like me?" I asked, suddenly feeling all awkward.
"Sometimes. But I get really sad when I think about you eating all by yourself. And you just work and work and you don’t even have a girlfriend." My favorite niece said that. Then she hit me with this: "Uncle, I heard Grandma say you don’t like girls. Is that true?" she whispered, like we were sharing nuclear codes.
I swear I almost exploded. It’s just a kid question, I know, but what has my mom been telling people?? I was mad for a second.
"Grandma told you that? So that’s why you begged your dad to bring you here alone? For an interrogation?!”
"I wanted a straight answer, no witnesses. So I can stop telling my teacher how awesome you are. She’s single and really pretty, by the way.”
"First of all, you are nine. We are shutting down this whole love talk right now!" I hissed, panicking.
She squinted and leaned in like a tiny FBI agent, close enough that I could count her eyelashes.
"So it’s true. You don’t like girls?”
"Hey, it's not… okay listen! It’s not that I don’t like girls!" I blurted, hands up in surrender. "It’s that girls don’t like… me."
My niece burst into a fit of giggles, then slid back into her seat like nothing happened. She grabbed the ice cream the waiter set down, perfectly unbothered.
And just like that, she ended our strange little heart-to-heart with the kind of wisdom you’d expect from a grandmother, not a 9-year-old.
"Uncle, I don’t care who you end up dating," she said, licking her ice cream. "Just… find someone who loves you the way my mom does. And promise me one thing," She looked up at me, dead serious. "Always save time to buy me ice cream, like today. Promise?"
My vision went blurry. Again.
Who knew a nine year old armed with vanilla ice cream and unsolicited life advice could drop emotional nukes like this? I was done for. Completely, utterly done for.
