What I Love About Godmommy Gina

- She is the real deal. There's no fake bullshit with Aunt Gina. Everyone knows exactly how she feels about you. This is a remarkable quality to have because when you feel like Gina loves you, you know for damn sure that she really and truly does.
- The bookend of her sister Berne, who we all considered the "fun aunt" whereas Gina was the "cool aunt."
- She is a ridiculously gifted Reiki Master and an intuitive Tarot card reader. She's a true healer.
- As a child, sleepovers with my Godmother meant sleeping in her spare bedroom in her super rad apartment in the city. We would stay up and watch Star Search and she served my milk at dinnertime in a wine glass. So fancy.
- Her laugh is completely infectious, especially when she gets going on a rip-roaring laugh and ends up doing a full-on pig snort.
- Among many other things she is mostly made up of  the following:
thoughtful
kind
caring
compassionate
warm
fun
hilarious
- She is genuine. Never is anything ever done for show or praise or any ulterior motive.
- Gina has always been considered the tough one in the family since she would never, ever let anyone walk all over her. In the early 90s Mum and I were dealing with a difficult situation, I'm thinking it was to do with a mechanic or someone who was condescending. We needed to call them back and mentioned the story to my father, hoping that he would call since men are always taken seriously by other men. True to cowardly form, Da said, "Geez, that's awful. Ya oughta get Gina to call him. She's the real butt-kicker."
- A fellow historical romance novel junkie!
- Adventurous in the kitchen and can cook up a storm. She loves nothing more than discussing, in depth, the latest recipe she wants to test out.
- Was the first person I ever knew that used popcorn and cranberries as garland on a Christmas Tree and I still think it's pretty fabulous.
- Is fairly tolerant but Xavier and I discovered that once pushed past her limit and into dangerous territory, her tolerance will actually carry over that danger zone. Example: in the 1990s on the first weekend in December, Aunt Berne, Alina, Xavier, Aunt Gina, and I would go to Windridge Tree Farm. Once around the time that Xavier and I were hooked on The Drew Carey Show, there was one episode where Craig Ferguson's Mr. Wick gave an odd gift to Drew which he (in his Scottish accent) said it was a "cubicle in a bot-tle." Xavier and I got on a weird tear in the fold of normal rational thought and started putting everything we could think of in a "bot-tle." We kept trying to one up the other and after at least 15 minutes Gina told us that was enough. We could tell she was annoyed with us and that it wasn't funny anymore. I don't know which of us said it but the next thing everyone heard was "it's an angry woman in a bot-tle" which made her crack up laughing all over again.
- She can talk to anyone and is super friendly.
- Un-apologetically who she is, love her or leave her.
- In the late 80s she saw an ad on TV about orphaned children in Romania. Most people would have thought, "how terrible" and maybe at best donated money. Not Gina. She was a regular single working-class gal but she put in motion the steps to get our Alina. Even though Lina doesn't like sweets or desserts of any kind (this is what truly sets her apart from the rest of us) she is the perfect fit in our family and it was one of Gina's best decisions.
In closing, I wish I'd spent more time with Godmommy in my 20s and 30s, just us, but I tend to think people will find me boring and dull and this kept me from spending quality time with a lot of people. Regardless, I have oodles of wonderful memories with her and plan on making more.