Tuesday, October 9, 2018

We Fly Just Like Birds of a Feather

yesterday a cousin and her husband came to visit.  they live about five hours away and were in the area to visit one of his relatives as well.  this cousin and i were close as children.  she is about a year older than i am and grew up in the same town where my maternal grandparents lived, so when i went to visit my grandparents every summer, we spent lots of time together.  we would play canasta and monopoly with her friends, go swimming, and to the movie.  as we got older, we naturally grew apart.  though she was only a year older than me, she was two grades ahead of me in school, and in high school two grades is a lot.

she married when she was in her late teens, and after that i didn't see much of her.  she and her husband moved away and our times together as children became distant memories.  her husband began drinking and, after a few years of marriage, they divorced.  some time after that, she married her current husband.  still, i only saw her during family holiday celebrations and at funerals.  when her father, my mother's brother, became ill, i saw more of her as she came to visit her parents to help her mother with her father.  by that time we had moved to the town where her parents lived, the same town in which i had played with her as a child and where my mother and her brothers had grown up.

i was with her father in the hospital when he died.  my cousin and her mother had left for a few minutes to grab some lunch, and they were so thankful that i had been there so my uncle didn't die alone.  no one expected him to go so soon, though we all knew that he wouldn't leave the hospital this time.  for several years after that, my wife and i spent lots of time with my cousin's mother, since we lived in the same town and saw much more of my cousin, since she came with greater frequency to check on her mother.  because of seeing each other more often and because my wife and i had become such close friends with my aunt, my childhood friendship with my cousin was rekindled.

when we traveled, we often went through the town where she lives now, and we would stop by to visit as we passed through.  we've stayed in close contact, and now when we're together we love to reminisce about our time together as children and about our large extended family.  we had great christmas get-togethers at the home of my grandparents when all our aunts, uncles, and cousins would be there, and the three of us who are the oldest of the cousins have stayed in close contact over the past several years.

it amazes me that we still feel bound together by our shared memories and long for those times long ago when we were carefree children who spent long hours playing board games and pretend games, building tents under card tables and building forts in our grandparents' back yard.  we remember taking turns sitting on the ice cream freezer on a hot summer afternoon while our parents took turns cranking the freezer or gorging ourselves with watermelon while the juice ran down our chins and over our shirts or running through the sprinklers to cool off in those days before air conditioning.  in those days we all lived either in the same town or near enough for frequent visits.  i wouldn't take anything for these wonderful memories and the friendships i share with my cousin who visited us yesterday and the other cousin with whom we stay in contact, though we don't see him very often because he lives about 800 miles away from us.

seeing my cousin reminds me of the importance of family, and the lessons we learned as children about caring for one another within the family.  may we each value those special bonds that tie us together, bonds that stretch across generations and distances.  may we remember that we are tied to every living thing in much the same way, that all of us are part of a great family.  may we nurture those who surround us, whether related to them by blood or not.  may we see every person as our father, mother, brother, sister, child, aunt, uncle, and cousin, seeking to love each as if we had grown up together in a family relationship.  shalom.

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