All My Cousins
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| My Great Aunt Cornelia, my Grandmother Lillie, and my Great Uncle Robert as children. Love those smiles! |
by Judith Cullen
(c) 2015
(c) 2015
We’ve always been a bit apart, my cousins and I. Hard times, good times, distances near and far,
as well as the various interpersonal mixes that are part and parcel of an
extended family are the understandable cause.
My sister and I have not always been in close touch with our contemporaries
across the family strata, nor they with us.
Family is a blessing.
Family can make you crazy. Family
is wild and diverse: you are theirs and they are yours whether you like it or
not. A collection of sub-divisions on
both sides of my family spin themselves into a bright spectrum of
personalities: a generation vibrantly reflecting those that came before while
each having a unique light all their own. Those are my cousins.
Something remarkable has happened over the past few years
and, for all its dangers and cultural pitfalls, social media has made this
easier than it would have been for previous generations. We’ve all been reconnecting. I think my sister, as usual, took the lead
and began the process. For me, it really
began when a cousin came down from her home in Alaska
last summer to visit her immediate family here in the Puget
Sound . Almost every connection and encounter since then has been
tinted with the same sweetness and surprise – the same delight.
