Cousins – Like Siblings without the Daily Harassment

One of the great things about my family reunion was that Moon got to spend some quality time with her cousins. When I was growing up, my cousins were my best friends. We didn’t have “play dates”, we had relatives.

They hiked up the trail.

They checked out the rental boats.

They went swimming at cousin Karen’s house.

You remember Karen, don’t you? Karen has a pool. And a house. Like a REAL house with a mortgage. How is that possible? She’s younger than I am and I’m, like, just out of high-school. She watched the kids while I  ran an errand with cousin Ginger and cousin Lisa.

You remember Ginger and Lisa don’t you? Here’s the deal, even though we were helping Ginger do something very adult and sad, the second we all got in the car, it was like we were seventeen again. Not the bad seventeen with horrible hair and acne, but the good seventeen – like the world existed just for you and anything was possible.

At least I think the feeling came from being with the cousins. While we were visiting, “Uncle” Lester insisted we try a shot or two of his new strawberry rum. And since it was only three hours away from 5 p.m., we said sure.

This looked perfectly in-focus at the time.

By the time we made it back to Karen’s, cousin Lori had joined us. You remember Lori? Hey, I don’t have any posts about LORI. How did that happen? Oh yeah, Lori doesn’t put pictures on Facebook so I’ve got nothing to steal. Hmmph. Well, even though Lori can’t possibly be out of high school, she says she’s a doctor. Shut UP. You know how people always say if they knew then what they know now, they would have been a lot nicer… Yeah, it’s like that.

So, the cousins sat around watching the kids swim and telling stories and there might have been a strawberry daiquiri involved, when someone got the big idea to go see cousin Brian. You remember Brian, right? He’s Lori’s brother and a few years ago, he and his father, Uncle Ralph (see previous post) decided to build Brian a log home. An authentic log home, the way they did it back in the day. The HARD Way. And as we talked about it, we thought, “Hey, let’s go there now. Maybe he’ll be sleeping. Maybe he’ll freak out. Maybe he’ll insist we drink some strawberry rum.” So we turned over the life-guarding duties to Aunt Faye and away we went. It’s important to mention at this point that Lori had not been drinking so we let her drive. Did I tell you she’s a doctor? Shut UP.

Alas, Brian wasn’t sleeping or at all freaked out to see us. He and his lovely wife showed us around the cabin without once mentioning that 3/4ths of us reeked of strawberry. He was very adult and grown up about the whole thing- it was, in a word, disappointing. But then he made us sit down and listen to a bunch of songs he recorded with his band when he was sixteen. Whew. I know people grow older and act responsibly – I just don’t want it to happen to a cousin.

Except Lori. I’m pretty sure a doctor is going to come in real handy one of these days. Little Lori – a doctor. Shut UP.