How Newt got her Newtness

My Aunt and Uncle. They helped raise me. And I love them very deeply. They are proud of me. Tell everyone they meet about me, and consider me their baby. When I am talking to them on the phone, or visiting them the entire world seems to disappear. And I feel like we are the only three people in the entire world. They are the kindest people you will ever meet. I know this because strangers feel a compulsion to be nice to them. They are from a different time, when people were kind, respectful, and would do anything, including give the shirt off their back, to help someone. I am always amazed at the lengths people will go to to help them. Even bored disinterested teenagers working a summer job at the deli find themselves preparing their meals just the way they like them and then sitting out on the curb waiting for them to drive up because they know it’s hard for my uncle to walk. Another restaurant they frequent offered to deliver their food to their house. Even though the restaurant is 25 miles away and has no delivery service.

They love each other more deeply than most of us could ever hope or dream for. They live solely for each other. It is a love so deep that you can feel it in the air. For 55 years they have held each other’s hand, kissed one another every time they sit down on the couch, kissed before he sits her down into the car and kisses her again when he gets into the driver’s side. (The rolls are reversed now and she drives but they still follow the same routine) They dress in the same color schemes, always wearing their best when they have to go out in public. They are from a time when a man was a gentleman and a woman was a lady.

My husband adores them. When I talk to my Aunt she still giggles about the first time he met them. It is a pretty funny story:

My aunt and my husband were in the kitchen cooking dinner. My aunt was straining the tomato soup. She doesn’t like tomato chunks. My husband stopped in mid sentence and stared at her. He then walked into the living room and stared at me. My uncle and I looked up at him and said “What?” (my aunt, curious, followed him into the living room)
He just kept looking from my aunt to me, silent, with his mouth hanging a little bit open.
And then he finally smiled and said “I get it now, I know where you come from.” We just burst out laughing. He said in that one moment he completely understood me. And my Aunt and Uncle and I just grinned from ear to ear. I was like them, and they were like me. And we, we were a family.