I’ve learned from the work of the primatologist Sarah Hrdy that aunts exist in nature. Of course they are everywhere, biologically speaking, but some (marmosets and langurs, I’m looking at you) truly behave as the aunt I want to be, the aunt I have already become, and this is called allomothering. They will feed, groom, hold, and carry a child when they have had none of their own. So there is a word for what this is that I’m doing, I and all my sisters of the genetic dead end. Whatever I’ve learned in this life will not stop with me; I’ll teach it to Elsa.
