Leah Damien Williams

I want to tell you about my aunt Ellen. She never had a child, never planned to.

I have had good parents. Wonderful sisters. Awesome friends. Some great boyfriends. But none of them have loomed larger; none of them have had a bigger impact than Ellen.

When I tell childfree and childless friends about her, they say, “I didn’t know anyone like that.”

At first, I feel loss for them. But then I remember that her story is nearly as important as she was, and I haven’t told it to them yet.

And once I tell it to you, I need you to remember her:

Every time someone says you can’t have an impact on the next generation without procreating.

Every time a politician ignores your existence by never calling women anything but “moms” or denigrates you with insulting terms (or funny ones—I do love being called a cat lady).

Every time coworkers or bosses dismiss your need for a holiday, implying their time is important because they’re parents, and yours isn’t because you aren’t one.

Every time some fool tries to panic you by warning that you’ll die alone.

Every time you turn on the TV or look at the big screen without seeing any lives like yours—

I need you to remember Ellen.

She only lived to be 49, one year younger than I am now. Ellen traveled the world for her work, bringing home foreign coins and presents from Hong Kong for her nieces and nephews, and little toothpastes from her flights. I worshipped her. We all did.

She designed figurines for Enesco, including of Garfield, which my sisters and I knew was the coolest career in the world. One year she even developed a figurine line centered on her oldest niece, my sister, and her oldest nephew. When the jealous second-youngest niece (me) cried in jealousy during a promotional photo shoot for the cousin figurines, Ellen added me—and all the other nieces and nephews—to the line. The line was a hit (sometimes childish fits do pay off). In fact, it was such a hit that all of us soon got to sign our names on brochures and on our own images at a Hallmark—like movie stars.

Ellen called her ten nieces and nephews every week. She took us on individual trips, hosted us in Chicago, played Clue with us by the hour, indulged us with any silly tourist traps or shows we desired, talked to us like adults, let us swear and bang into her beautiful furniture, recounted our funny remarks to others with pride, cried at our talents and laughed with us constantly. She told us we would excel just by being ourselves—without ever patronizing us or suggesting we had talents we didn’t. And because Ellen was the one who said so, we believed her.

At reunions she spoiled her siblings and us kids at a restaurant called Greek Islands. She told us to shout when the flaming saganaki arrived, ordered everything on the menu, and tipped so generously that the waiters assisted her when she grabbed the bill. Ellen was the planner of reunions, the one who convinced everyone to come, the one everyone came to see.

Despite all the time she spent with kids, Ellen had a rich single life in the city—and the bawdy stories, hilarious friends, keepsakes, travel tales, and sobbing attendees at her funeral to prove it. When she died, I was just 21. Even without her, I chose her life as the pattern for my own. In many ways, my sisters did the same.

Last year one of her younger brothers started ailing, nearly thirty years after her death. Many of her nieces and nephews visited him in Kansas, sharing funny Ellen stories with each another. One nephew, who had been a child when she died, showed my sisters and me his new home. He had incorporated Ellen’s lamps and vases and even her kimono souvenir into his masculine dwelling, and as we toured all he’d done, we smiled, knowing that his love for her was as strong as ours, even though he’d had so many fewer years with her.

No parent could have given all ten of us that kind of time. No parent could have directed so much attention, so much love, so much advice and wisdom and laughter our way.

And let’s not forget—no parent could have retained a cool image well past young women’s and men’s junior high school years, as Ellen did for all of us.

When my nine-year-old niece and eleven-year-old nephew traveled to my city this month, my childfree sister and I spoiled them, listened to them, let them rebel in the way only a nonparent could. We recounted conversations from our weekly Skype calls, brought my basketball-loving nephew to a Fever game, took my niece on a girls’ day with makeup and shopping and boba.

My niece asked, “Will you ever have kids?”

How many times I used to ask Ellen the same, fearing she’d say yes!

I said no, as did my oldest sister.

“Good,” she replied.

I wish my childfree and childless friends without an Ellen in their lives knew as instinctually as I do that brave women living unconventional lives without children—by choice or misfortune—can spread their love to more children, can be more memorable to them, can have more of a far-reaching impact on them than they possibly could have dreamed of in any vision of parenthood they ever had.

I should know. I’m Ellen’s niece.