The night before she turned 18 she learned one of the best secrets of her life.
Stacy had spent the past two weeks with her aunts doing all of the things she loved to do most. Baking with Aunt Gloria, planning with Aunt Bets, playing with Aunt Perry. And learning about everything they could teach her. Going to the birthday cake house was still her favorite thing to do.
But she was worried.
Her parents had always brought her here on vacations. She couldn't remember a time they hadn't come and she always thought that it was their favorite place as well. But lately they had brought her and then left to go somewhere else. And looking back she realized that they had never seemed to embrace the birthday cake house as much as she did. Her father was always worried it wasn't structurally sound and that truth be told the aunts might not be all that sound either. Her mother only ventured to the upper floors of the house the one time during the eclipse. Other than that she stayed in the lower floors.
Would Stacy eventually outgrow the house and its charms as well? Would she, like her parents, start choosing other places she would rather go? She liked to travel already. And she knew that she would like to see as much of the world as she could. But she also always wanted to come back here and talk to her aunts about what she had seen. Where she wanted to go next.
She and her aunts were all sitting together on one of the platforms drinking tea and watching the stars.
"What was my mother like as a child?" Stacy thought that might give her a clue as to when her mother had started to drift away from the aunts and the house.
"I imagine she was like she is now, just smaller." Aunt Bets said.
Aunt Gloria laughed, "That seems to be the usual way. People are not much different at their core no matter what age they are."
Stacy tried to clarify, "No, I mean, when she would visit here. What was she like? Did she always just want to bake and sit quietly in the kitchen?"
Aunt Perry shook her head, "She never came here as a child. We didn't meet your mother until she was a grown woman."
"Oh! Wow! I had always thought that you were Mom's side of the family. Dad just didn't seem...well...enough like you."
"And your mother does?" Aunt Bets tried to hide the tone in her voice. Not well, but she tried.
"Well no. Not really. That's why I wanted to know what she was like. When she lost that, I don't know how to describe it, feeling? So I guess it was Dad all along. What was he like? Was he always such a stickler for rules and the ways things should be?"
"He has been for as long as we've known him." Aunt Gloria replied.
Stacy was starting to get a little confused, "And how long have you known him?"
"Oh close to 18 years I would say." Aunt Perry answered.
"Wait, you mean you aren't either my mother's or my father's aunts?"
"What do they call us?" Aunt Bets asked.
"The aunts."
"Then I would say that yes we are their aunts."
"But how? If you didn't know them as children then it's not by blood, was it by marriage? Did they come along with one of Aunt Gloria's husbands?"
Aunt Gloria laughed, "Oh no. My husbands had all left this plane before we ever met your parents."
"Then whose aunts are you?"
"We've already established that. Your parents call us the aunts so we are their aunts of course and you call us aunt as well so we are yours. I'm not sure what is confusing here." Aunt Bets never could understand how people could take very simple things and make them very complicated.
Aunt Perry broke in, "There are many ways to define family. There is family you inherit through birth. There is family you gain through marriage. And then there is family that you choose."
Stacy thought for another moment, "Then how did we become family? Who chose you?"
"Well you did." Aunt Gloria replied.
"I did? How did I choose you when you said it was close to 18 years ago. I'm only just going to be 18 in," she checked her watch, "about 10 minutes."
Aunt Perry smiled, "You needed us and so we were there."
"I needed you?"
"Yes, you said it yourself. Your mother doesn't really understand the need for more in life. Your father is a stickler for rules and logic. You, you are different. You understand the extra. You can feel it. You can see it. Without someone around who also understood the drive for more, well, you would have eventually lost it. You needed us."
Aunt Gloria patted her knee, "You reached out to us and we found you. The rest is family history."
"But how did you convince my parents to come here? To just add new family to their lives?"
"Oh I am sure your father thinks we belong to your mother and you mother thinks we came along with your father. They will be fuzzy on the details of the first visit, whose idea it was or wasn't. But once they started coming it was just a matter of tradition. You would be surprised what people do in the name of tradition that they really don't know why or if they even like it." Aunt Bets waved off the thought like she was shooing a mosquito.
"It's almost time." Aunt Gloria almost whispered. "Eighteen years old. Are you ready?"
Stacy thought about it for a second. Ready or not she was turning 18 in a few moments. And tomorrow her parents would arrive and they would all celebrate together. Her mother, her father and the aunts. Her aunts. A feeling of peace came over her then. She knew she would never outgrow the house, or her aunts, or the feeling of belonging that only came here. She was ready to face eighteen and the world beyond now.
She seemed to feel the vibration even before she heard the gong.
Her Aunt Bets smiled, "A little something special for the occasion."
As the clock struck midnight the gong sounded 18 times. Deep and true. Stacy sat with her aunts, holding hands, watching the stars, listening to the gong, feeling the vibration deep in their bones.
This was her family. Forever.
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