On My Not-so Avuncular Relationship with Daniela

A short personal essay

Daniela's Quinceañera, May 12th, 2012

I am ten years older than my niece, Daniela.

I remember when she was first learning to speak, when she was about two or three —making me 12 or 13 —I would try to get her to call me Tio Mauro (Uncle Mauro in spanish). But she just wouldn’t. It never stuck. She would just call me Mauro. And I was fine with it. It didn’t bother me too much.

It is fitting, in fact, that she just call me Mauro.

The uncle is usually much older man than his niece, at least in the common conception of it. I’m picturing a man in his early twenties holding in his arms his infant niece, a man in his late twenties/early thirties playing board games or sports with the preteen child.

But I was a child when Daniela was an infant, a teen when she was a child, and a young adult now that she is a teen.

Daniela does not show me the proper reverence that should be automatically granted to your elders, the type of respect naturally due to a large generational gap. She does not behave in the shy, polite way I imagine a niece would act toward her uncle.

Instead, Daniela kicks me, punches me, slaps me, jokes with me, farts on me, throws crap at me, yells at me. She even hammered a Nintendo 64 controller on my testicles once when I was bragging about beating her at Mario Kart. And you know what? I do the same to her —except for hitting her in the balls for obvious physiological reasons. 

We treat each other disrespectfully, sure, but it’s the sort of disrespect born out of an intimacy made possible only through the comfort of closeness and familiarity, which stems naturally from so much time spent together.

I’ve coached her through Legend of Zelda games. We’ve played Mario Kart, Wii sports, Mario Bros. games, countless times together. We’ve gone to the park or right outside our houses to play basketball, throw around a frisbee or kick around a soccerball. We’ve run around the house pretending Daniela was Leon Kennedy and that I was a zombie. We’ve watched hundreds of episodes of Tosh.o and Family Guy and Friends. How many times has she “forced” me to watch 13 Going on 30? We’ve re-enacted scenes of Austin Powers movies. We’re obsessed by the same viral videos and by RAAAAAAAANDY! and Jenna Marbles. We play amateur violin/guitar duets and post them on youtube with some degree of shame and embarrassment. We’ve made cakes and cupcakes and apple pies together and different kinds of pasta. We’ve gone to Sonic to eat at the drive-in, to Olive Garden to celebrate (or rather to take advantage of never-ending pasta bowl), to Costco to eat hotdogs/pizza, to Fuji Roll to eat Sushi, to Jack-in-the-Box to drink Coca-Cola Ice-cream floats and eat greasy 50 cent tacos, to Bakers to eat bean and cheese burritos. I’ve guided her through some of her homework throughout the years and given her advice on how to achieve scholastic success. We’ve even been coworkers. Yeah, we’ve done all sorts of stuff together.

So, no, Daniela does not show me that respect given to an uncle uncle.

But it’s OK.

After all, Daniela is not just my niece.

She is my little sister. And I am her older brother.

And I think she knows that now and has known it for probably as long as she can remember, even as a toddler forming her first words and sentences.

And that is, of course, why she does not call me Tio Mauro today and didn’t call me that then. You wouldn’t call your older brother that.