Cousins

The cousins are visiting. Nieces and nephew to me, but first cousins to my kids, and it works just like I remember it working.

I always loved my encounters with cousins as a kid. Wherever you went, if there was a cousin you had an automatic friend. It didn’t matter if you were 1st cousins, 2nd cousins, or 3rd cousins once removed. It didn’t matter if they were boy cousins or girl cousins, a little older or a little younger cousins… a cousin, by definition, was someone you could count on.

My dad used to take us all over the country on summer trips and inevitably we’d end up meeting a cousin or two we never knew existed. In Florida when I was about 10, I met my cousins Steve and Mike. Steve was a little bit older. Mike was exactly my age. Even today, I’d have to stop and think about exactly how we were related. My father and their father, I believe, were first cousins, so that would have made us second generation. It didn’t really matter, however. Mike and Steve took me around town (or maybe it was just around their block) and showed me all the things 10-year-old kids did in Florida, which was pretty similar, believe it or not, to the things 10-year-old kids did in Kansas. Except… they drank their tea sweet. I nearly spit the stuff all over myself when I took my first big swig as I sat on the porch of one of their neighbors trying to act cool as if I drank tea all the time. Plain ole’ tea was bad enough, but the sugar in that stuff they shared with me in Florida could have held the spoon up on its own. Still makes me shudder to think about it.

Sometimes we met cousins who came from even smaller and more rural places than our own. Johnna was one such cousin, near enough to my age that we enjoyed each other’s company for the few days my family visited hers in Missouri. Never in my life had I felt like such a big city girl as the two days I spent hanging out with my cousin, Johnna. She took me fiddle-stompin’. I let her listen to music on my headphones that she had never heard.

In Oregon I remember meeting and hanging out with my older cousin, Shiryla. She was way cool and we exchanged letters for quite a few years after we met. There was cousin Bob in Idaho (way cute) and a half dozen other boys whose names and faces blur together, but man was it fun to be part of such a large crowd for the few days we visited.

Not all cousins were great, of course. My cousin Lyle, a few years older (we met when we were teens) was arrogant and rude as far as I was concerned. I got a kick out of my younger cousin, Rocky, however, (Lyle’s nephew) and managed to enjoy that trip, as well.

The best cousins, of course, were the ones who lived right down the road and my cousins from Oklahoma who spent nearly every summer with us. And even though we go years and years as adults without seeing each other, every time I’ve managed to hook up with them it’s just like when we were kids. We just yammer and chat and find it easy to hang out. Something about shared blood just makes things comfortable.

The cousins that are here this evening are near-perfect age mates for my own kids. The oldest two had seven years of living right down the road from each other before we moved away, so it’s easy to see how these girls click and seem to have an understanding of each other that runs deep. The boys, however, have barely spent more than a week full of days together in their entire lives. Mine was still in diapers when we left and my nephew not yet born. But all evening long they have been running around like they’ve known each other forever.

There’s just something about a cousin. They’re familiar in ways that only family can be.