April- Plans and Cousins

Apparently even after a successful trial of blogging, I got shy and didn't feel like posting for a while. What I did do, though, was resolve to keep trying for the year.  Give myself a reasonable, attainable goal of writing one blog a month.  I even headed off what I was going to do... open letters.  They're a relatively new concept to me, but I questioned it not at all when I heard the term.  It's just a generalized letter written almost to the public but targeting a person or a group of people.  Open letter to New Mexicans.  Or an open letter to the president of Clorox.

So I lined up all the general people that influenced my life and categorized them and put them into a list and shook it up so that each month I have an open letter.  This month is to cousins...  So here goes!

An open letter to cousins:

A surprising amount of recognition is going out to you cousins these days.  It is quite the poetic blend of relationships.  Cousins are part sibling, part friend, and part co-conspirator.  Even though the trend may be changing back, it's been generally the case that people are having fewer kids than the generations before them.  That means those families of 10+ kids are less common.  So what do those families replace all those siblings with?  That's right, cousins.  Even though you may only have one brother, you can easily have 40+ first cousins.  (Forget the whole second cousin thing, that's just straight up nonsensical).  What a plethora of characters to now color our lives with!

It's especially appropriate this month to think about cousins.  I have one coming to visit the states from abroad.  I'm pretty sure neither he nor his wife or his two girls have been here before.  What a treat!  Having cousins all over the world made me more globally connected pre-worldwideweb than I could have imagined.  With you, I was more informed than I would be with a pen pal.  We would shop for each other, take each other on tours of our daily world and lives, and just generally knew we could have been living in each others' shoes if fate had played things out differently.  

But back to my original characterization.  Part-sibling.  Although the connection of a sibling is hard to reproduce, you cousins do a darn good job.  Even as siblings can get under each others' skin and annoy the living bejeezus out of you, no one understands the atrocities of your parents like a sibling. In much the same way, having parents who are siblings means that we cousins can enjoy general merriment in the convoluted ways that our parents are alike.  If anything, it's much more comical, and still connects us in a way of, "Yeah, that can you believe our dads still do that?"  It's the type of real that's done in such understated, ingrained way that we could never explain it to the outsider.  And because the family component is there, it also means you can wear the stupidest of PJs and it doesn't matter, even get grief over said PJs, and still... a shrug, a bond, a family moment.  Only here with you does that happen.

Part-friend.  Here's where you veer away from siblings.  With siblings, there's the jealousy, rivalry, [grumble, grumble, insert your annoyances here].  For some reason, cousins can avoid that (for the most part).  Instead, (with those of you that were close in age) we can take on the world like the twins we kind of are!  I somehow was okay listening to country music, would be inspired to try my hand a painting, attempted to learn about baseball, and teased all the others younger than us because, well because we were a force together.  Besties.

Aaand lastly.  Part co-conspirator.  The partner in crime element of the last attribute to cousins is your ability to transcend time.  Whether you were much older or younger, whether we lived close or far, whether we saw each other often or rarely, this part of our relationship was formed.  The finding of common ground in sharing a part of us:  secrets, jokes, fears, you name it.  All under the umbrella of judgement-free bonding.  We all had things in common, but still had/have vaaaastly different personalities.  If we embraced those differences with everyone we met in life like we do with our cousins, who knows where we could be.  Because the loud mouth can make us roll our eyes and laugh, depending on what she's doing.  Or because our hearts still warms knowing the shy one still has memories of how special that birthday gift was.

I look up to you, my older cousins, for your take on life- dealing with boys, dealing with girls, how to handle college, running a household, working a real adult job.  I admire and have some pride in you younger ones that have grown into such beautiful (I mean on the inside, but now that I think about it, even on the outside) human beings.  All you ball-busters and all you compassionate ones, all those that have made all the right decisions, and those that have made all the wrong ones.  Because of you I have cherished family, learned intricacies of human endeavor, felt the loss of broken spirits,  overcome loneliness, and find resilience.  And I continue to have a drive in knowing more-- to continue to be a part of each others' lives in whatever fashion that may be.  To you, cousins, here's to you.  I couldn't sit here writing, if it weren't for you.