Red Light, Green Light

When I was six years old, my mom's youngest sister spent the summer with us in South Carolina.  Aunt J was 21, and she waited tables at a Chinese restaurant in town.  The front doors were a large red circle.  Red circle doors - those are the things you remember when you're six.

I can close my eyes and see the pjs I wore that summer - white with orange ribbing on the cuffs, a basket of peaches and "Just Peachy" on the shirt.  That summer Aunt J started calling me "Peaches" and it stuck.  I was just a kid, and so was she.

I remember riding in the car with Aunt J, telling her not to stop because I could make the light turn green.  Aunt J inched forward until the car nearly bucked and stalled, and I willed that light to turn green.  And when it did I shrieked in a peal of six year old laughter.  Despite knowing better, Aunt J laughed with me.  Time and again I willed those lights to turn green.  She never let me in on the secret that, of course, the light would always, eventually, turn green.  

Close to thirty years later Aunt J is my dear, beloved friend.  Her sisters and her children have my heart, and have been my haven.  And she still helps me make red lights turn green. 

It's impossible to know what will change someone in an unexpected and profound way.  But if you can be someone's round red doors or light that turns green at the very last, crucial moment - it just might stick.