Letters From Home

Life looks at infmom / infmom looks at life

where’d she go?

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I know, I know. I haven’t posted for way too long. An eternity in cyberspace years.

Life intervenes, sometimes.

A couple weeks ago, I met one of my cousins for the very first time. See, my dad was very boy-centric, so his interest in his family focused mostly on his father’s relatives. And his father didn’t have very many relatives. Not close ones, anyway. There’d been only one boy per family per generation since 1860. My dad had only one first cousin and we didn’t hear about him much because he was the son of my grandfather’s sister. And my brothers and I only met his children, our second cousins, once in our lives.

Yeah. Boy centric. Don’t get me started.

Anyway, there’s this whole other side of the family. I didn’t find out till just a couple years ago that my dad’s mother was one of six siblings, and she and all her brothers and sisters had multiple children each, and thus my dad had plenty of first cousins on his mother’s side and my brothers and I therefore have plenty of second cousins (all but one of my dad’s generation, and of course all their parents, are gone now).

It was one of these second cousins who came to visit. She found me through a family tree I’d posted on one of the genealogy web sites. I had rather plaintively asked for information, not expecting to hear anything, because my grandmother’s maiden name was one of those extremely common ones. Not quite as common as Smith, or Miller, but pretty close. So it was really a wonder that she recognized me for who I was and was kind enough to email me and say so.

And she was going to be traveling, and her travels were going to bring her to our area, so I invited her to come to our house and meet me and my family and my youngest brother and his family (my second brother, who also lives in California, is back east caring for our mother).

My cousin turned out to be just the most delightful, down-to-earth person anyone could imagine. I felt like we were old friends already. We had a big cookout in the back yard and got to know each other a bit, and she stayed overnight and then I dropped her off at Union Station the next day (via a bit of sightseeing in Chinatown) to catch the Flyaway bus to the airport to continue her travels.

I hope she can come back again sometime, or we can visit her in New Jersey. She’s a person definitely worth knowing. Being part of the family is just frosting on the cake.

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Author: infmom

Otherwise known as Infamous Mom.

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