PANK

I was listening to this podcast has to be my least favorite phrase in the English language. When I hear it, my youth spontaneously combusts—my skin wrinkles, my spine bows, liver spots break out on my hands, and within moments I resemble a decrepit crone shaking her gray locks and lamenting that the golden age of encyclopedias has passed her by.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a podcast. I listen to a podcast every single day. But I, at least, have the COMMON DECENCY to pretend that the information I’m regurgitating was pulled from the pages of a peer-reviewed journal or the Sunday newspaper. I am a whimsical Substack girly, prone to daydream and frolic through meadows; bother me not with mentions of your twenty-first century media.

So please know that it physically pains me to type the following sentence.

The other day, I was listening to this podcast (cold sweat!! fingers trembling!!!) when I heard an amazing word: PANK, or Professional Auntie No Kids.

As the name suggests, a PANK is a woman who does not have children of her own, but is a devoted aunt to her nieces and nephews.

I am a PANK. I am joyfully, wholeheartedly, committedly PANK.

How glorious it is to find an expression that speaks to one’s innermost self. To discover other women who feel such a tangible soul-tie to kids they didn’t bring into the world, but feel responsible for all the same.

With PANK, perhaps for the first time, I have language for this new version of me. I’ve never liked the word childfree; it suggests a lack of children in my life. That’s certainly not the case. I’ve got my babies, they’re just not my babies. I’m Auntie Tatas, and it’s my proudest accomplishment.

A seismic shift occurred for me the day my first niece was born, much in the same way women report being permanently altered by the arrival of their first child.

I was changed, racing to the hospital at three in the morning after picking up “the call.” I was changed, pacing the waiting room, frantically staring at the clock above the ward doors. And I was changed, ugly crying in that delivery room, when my exhausted, badass sister gave me the greatest gift I will ever receive: a niece, with my name.

To be granted a child’s namesake is the closest thing I can imagine to being divinely blessed. I have never felt so humbled, so shocked, so purposeful, so exactly where I needed to be. It was the answer to a question I’d been asking my whole life: what am I here for? Turns out, I’m here for her, this new, perfect human. I’m here for them—my nieces and nephews, the truest loves of my life.

That same niece just turned four. We talk on the phone every single day, often twice. She loves books and fruit and being naked, just like me. She’s obsessed with the palm trees here in “Angeles” and so I gave her a palm tree necklace for her birthday. My sister sent me a picture of her wearing it to school. It’s her prized possession, she wrote.

My sister did not have to send that text. She did not have to allow me this closeness with her daughters. She did not have to nickname their guest bedroom “Tatas’ room,” or let me pick out the wallpaper. She does not have to pick up the phone every time I call, or talk about me to the girls when I’m not there so they can still feel my presence.

She does not have to do any of these things. She does not have to share them with me. And yet, she does.

It’s a token I can never repay, though I thank her incessantly, on greeting cards, or in the occasional long sappy text. Thank you, for letting me love them the way you do. I recognize it for the immense privilege it is, to be given a front row seat to their lives.

My job as Auntie Tatas has expanded threefold in as many years. My sister and her husband gave me a second niece, sunshine incarnate, and another is on the way. My brother and sister-in-law gave me a nephew last year, and that giggly, “tiny bald man” has carved his own permanent spot in my heart.

I demand: more babies. I am a very greedy PANK.

I do not take for granted this newfound freedom of mine, to bend my life around them instead of someone else. To plan travel around labors, and childcare gaps, and being extra hands on deck for a long-haul flight. And it is only because I am not making a family of my own that I’m allowed this wild luxury of centering my attention on these three—almost four—precious humans and their parents.

On the podcast (gag!!) where I first heard PANK, two childfree women—coiner of the term, Melanie Notkin, and Thrive Solo host Lucy Meggeson—discussed their decision not to have kids. I’ve often wondered, Lucy mused, if I would have been as close to my nieces and nephews if I’d had kids of my own.

There’s just no way. While I do believe love is infinite (I’m reminded acutely of this each time a new niece or nephew is born), we only have so much time and energy in a day. In a life. My auntie identity would have been eclipsed by a mommy identity—which, of course, would and should be the priority.

Now, these babies can be my priority. Helping their parents can be my priority. (Even though I know they don’t need my help; they’re just pretending, because they know how much it means to me to be a part of their lives.)

My nieces and nephew are certainly not experiencing a lack of care. My siblings and their partners are wonderful, attentive, deeply nurturing parents, and my folks have become the world’s best grandparents. Those babies don’t need love from me. And I absolutely would never equate my role in their lives as on par with Mommy and Daddy, or Lolli and Pop.

But as far as I know, no kid has ever suffered from too much love.

And whether or not they need it, it is an honor to bestow it, just the same.

So I will—selfishly and blissfully and until told otherwise—build my life around them. I’m already saving for the “Tatas Ten,” a tradition in which I’ll be taking each of them on a weekend holiday to a destination of their choosing, just the two of us, complete with a fancy hotel, terrible junk food, and whatever toys, clothes, gadgets and gizmos they can get their hands on in forty-eight hours. I’m also saving to supplement college tuitions, first cars, that prom dress or that pair of sneakers desperately wanted but just out of reach.

Being an PANK is and will be fun and rewarding—cash slid into a palm, a wink across the table, a contraband beer (or two). But I’m not just here for that.

I want to be the auntie who is in the thick of baggage and crumbs and vomit on road trips, who flies in during a bad breakup, who deep cleans a filthy apartment, who intervenes when behavior is too risky, even if it means I have to hurt some feelings.

Notkin explains an auntie as: not a mother, not a friend, but an auntie, the perfect blend.

Being an auntie sometimes requires mothering. And, like a mother, I take my job very seriously.

It’s a joy most of the time, but I know it won’t always be. That doesn’t scare me, or make me want the job less. If anything, it makes me want it more. Because what a blessing it is to be there in a child’s (or a parent’s) time of need. What a blessing, to defend that which I love most.

I wish I could bubble-wrap these perfect babies and prevent this big, bad world from happening to them. In lieu of that, I’ll stand beside them through all of it—and step in front of them without hesitation, when I must. I imagine myself armor-clad and daring, an FMC from my overflowing bookshelf—when in reality it looks more like sweatpants, hair in a bun, and a quiet decision to call, to text, to book the ticket, to show up, over and over again.

Because that’s what PANKS do. PANKS are not aunts in word alone, a sideways branch on the family tree or the drunken reprobate at Christmas dinner (well, that too). They are aunts by action, by devotion, by consistency. If I do nothing more in this life of mine, being an auntie to these babies is enough for me.

So yes. If you need me, I’ll be getting PANK tattooed on my ass. As any cool auntie would.