Cousins Week - Letter to a Home Town

Cousin Art Time

I don’t want to! I am digging in my heels! I am balling my fists! I am sticking out my bottom lip! I don’t want to get out of the lake and dry off! I don’t want to go and write my column! I want to keep playing! This is my cousin time! Sigh. Okay. I’ll get to it. But first watch me jump off the dock just one more time.

I was the only grandchild for 8 years. That is a long time. When others told the tales of summer get-aways and gatherings with all the cousins their own age, I always felt a little left out. It wasn’t that I didn’t get to go places and do things. I just didn’t have any cousins my age.

There were advantages to being a singleton. I got to go all kinds of places with a lot of different family members. Just one kid, especially one who is adept at self entertainment, is pretty easy to take along. I got to go to Canada and to Michigan. I got spoiled in all the households we visited where their own children had grown.

When I was 8 my first cousin came along. It was pretty cool for the first year or two. She was cute and didn’t do much. I got attention for giving her attention. The thing is she got older and some claimed even cuter. As far as I was concerned she was quickly becoming decidedly less fun and more bother. A 3 year old tag-along was not my 11 year old idea of an ideal playmate.

8 years is a lifetime when you are 8. When I was 16 I was I twice her age (and I knew everything). When I had my first kid, 8 years behind she was still a kid. When she had her first kid, I was a seasoned mommy with two.  A funny thing was happening though: with each year, 8 years became less and less of a gap. These days 8 years may as well be 8 months. She even has more kids than me!

Hosted by our uncles (YAY!), this week we are at Trout Lake. Five adults, three teens, two tweens and four under four; the house is filled to the rafters with cousins. Breakfast goes on for a couple of hours as the seemingly endless stream of bodies awake. Like ants to a melon rind we trail to the lake to swim and play all morning. The melting pot of ages and stages means enough eyes, hands and laps that everyone gets some free time and me time. I have even gotten to write this column virtually undisturbed.

You’ll pardon me now. I must sign off. I want to go check on my daughter the elder. Her 3 year old cousin has been trailing her all day and a 3 year old tag along when you are 11… I have a hunch she’d appreciate a break.  

I hope that this letter has found you and yours in good spirits and good health. Until I write again…

Cousin Play Time