My parents each had three siblings. They tended to have larger families than ours which resulted in 14 cousins on mom's side and 9 cousins on dad's side. 17 of those cousins lived in Kansas while we were growing up. Larry and I were on the young end of the cousin pool. I think I am the youngest on both sides and remember feeling a bit cheated when the older cousins started having children pushing me out of my coveted position as the "baby." Larry and I grew up a long ways from the others however made visits with the family every year or so. I have memories of summers as well as Christmas's with various cousins, aunts and uncles.
Most of the cousins lived in more rural settings than we came from. It was always exciting to explore their homes and yards which seemed SO much bigger than our little suburb home. Although they weren't all living on farms, that is how we viewed it. It is funny that I remembered the spaces as being so much bigger than they actually were as I discovered upon revisiting last week. I remember walking to "town" with my cousins for ice cream one time. In my mind it was this really long walk and a big act of independence. I laughed when I saw it the other day and realized that my aunt and uncle had actually lived quite close to the store. I also drove around "grandma's park" - the park across the street from Grandma's house - and laughed to see that it was not quite as big as I remembered it either.
I thought my cousins were really cool living out in the country. When we visited there was so much space to explore. I thought they were pretty fantastic. We did things with them that were so foreign to our small family of city dweller. I remember my first demolition derby, pulling thistles out of a large field, shelling peas, and large family picnics and Christmas parties just to name a few. I have really fun memories of childhood visits to my cousins in the country. It has been funny to discover that some of them thought we were the exotic ones as we arrived in our little VW bug with it's lack of engine in the front along with our different accent.
The regular visits to Kansas stopped when I became a teenager. This past weekend was my fourth visit to Kansas in the span of thirty plus years. Needless to say, I have lost touch with many of my cousins. Since my mom is a great communicator, I have heard of some of their adventure and seen pictures but have had little contact. I saw some cousins on this trip that had not seen me since I was a little girl with blonde pig tails. Over the past few years, relationships with a couple of these cousins have been in the process of being restored. It was fun to continue that trend last weekend as I connected with so many more cousins.
After four paragraphs of back ground, I am getting to the point. And truthfully I am struggling to know exactly how to express it. But I want to try - for my sake more than yours. My family grew up in an isolated way. We lived far from extended family with only occasional interactions. In some way's Larry's disabilities isolated our family socially. For the most part we have been a pretty independent functioning nucleus. That is a generality of course because there are many people including family who have supported us along the way. Yet over the long haul, in the physical sense our family unit has functioned on its own. With Peter's addition to our family we became a family of five and now with Larry's death we are back down to four.
At Larry's memorial service, the four of us sat on the front row. And behind us were fifty or so family and friends supporting us and sharing with us in our grief and our memories. That is a physical picture of the whole long weekend in Kansas. I realized we were not alone. We spent time with family and reconnected. Though there has been time and space between me and the extended family, I realized connections that were easily rekindled. There is a support system, a bond with my extended relatives that I had not realized. I saw them embrace me, Peter, "uncle Bob" and "Aunt Millie" in such a way of acceptance that made me realize I wasn't alone and I didn't have to remain feeling isolated.
No comments:
Post a Comment