Cousins

Having been deprived of siblings (no offense, mom), my cousins were the closest things I had to siblings growing up. We spent weeks together in the summers. Those weeks are mostly lodged somewhere in my subconscious, but pieces of them have stuck where I can remember them.

Richmond Hill summers were swarthy and thick as you can imagine, but we seemed not to notice. Mimi and Pop-pop cared, though, and they let us know by shouting incessantly for us to close the doors to the house when we'd go in and out. I remember stepping out of the side of the cool house into a garage that smelled dankly of concrete, chemicals, shrimp, and dirt. The shrimpy smell presumably came from the ancient upright freezer where my grandparents kept all the excess haul of foods. I remember mornings in the sunny back yard, climbing low trees and dividing the whole yard into territories. There were afternoons of dressing ourselves in wigs of spanish moss, fanning one another with palmetto limbs, climbing trees. Then at the end of the day we'd compare the number of chigger bites we had while we treated ourselves with Calamine Lotion.

The worst thing about these memories is that I distinctly remember being bossy to all my cousins. There's no getting around this. I was older than everyone else by at least a year. Besides, I lived with my grandparents for a couple of crucial years and acted like I owned the place. I tied one cousin to a tree with a jump rope. My favorite game was royal kingdom with a role carved out just for me - the queen. Alan, by dint of being the only boy, got to be king. I think poor Sherri had to be cowering princess a lot. This made those weeks in the summer hugely gratifying for me, prolonged power trips as they were.

Cousins, I'm sorry for being bossy. I wouldn't have enjoyed a domineering, bossy older cousin - and I'm sure you didn't either. I'm much less bossy now. I think. Will you please forgive me?

Only you five know what it was like to ride to the movies in the trunk back of the station wagon, pretending that we knew foreign languages on the way. Only you know can identify with the privilege of sleeping in the living room at Christmas so we could gaze at the tree and get in trouble for making the slightest noise. Only you remember running to feed the fish and playing with something bizarre called a camel saddle (what's with those, anyway?). Only you remember incurring Mimi's wrath (sorry Mimi) and Pop-pop's quiet, cheerful, stubborn routines.

One summer, Mimi, Pop-pop and I stopped at my Nebraska cousins' house for a week layover. I will never forget that time we spent with them because it was on their terms. They knew the lay of the land. It was an awesome week. You guys took me to mass for the first time. We went out for pizza. We went to a July fourth fireworks celebration on base. My personal favorite was playing hide-and-seek in the corn field near your house. The twins were still short enough that they could run through the corn without bending over and still be completely hidden; I towered over it. I remember going downstairs after bedtime and you guys were all three on the couch watching Puff Daddy on MTV. I sat and watched with you until late. I had such a great week. Those trips were so long and so solitary. I got to see a lot of the country from the car window, but I was constantly antsy to get out and run around. I'll never forget my week in Nebraska. I'm a little sad that my understanding of who you are now has to reach back that far because we haven't really done anything together for such a long time...but I figure you're as much who you were then as I am who I was then. (Does that make sense?) And that's a lot.

I spent more time with my NC cousins. We always had a blast with their recording equipment and playing in their pool. I stepped on a bee at your house; we danced around the living room to loud music. I also remember returning to the East in a minivan after a family reunion in OK. We stopped at the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Preserve and your dad led us on an amazing hike. I think we all learned a thing or two walking across miles of shrubby, rocky terrain. Then Sherri and I slept in the van (whose decision was that?) that night and it was SOOO cold. And Sherri had to watch me fill a 24-oz soda cup with pee because I couldn't hold it any more. THAT was a bad night.

Good times, bad times, you know we've had our share. That's the thing - it wasn't always good. Some parts were and some parts weren't, but that's how life is. It strikes me that family knows how you REALLY are. And that's okay with me.

Every time I'm around my cousins, I'm struck by the bizarre similarities we share that can't be accounted for in any other way than "We're family." Alan and I share an aversion to certain numbers. I'm pretty sure I walk like my uncles, who walk identically to one another. I remember noting this detail about them when I was about 10 and we were all together in Savannah for Pop-pop's second heart surgery. They left together to get some food. Watching the two of them walk away down the hall exactly alike was eerie. Jenny and Lisa and Lindsay have eyes like my oldest daughter - and they all favor the Estes clan in their own way. I don't know. I miss all my family a lot. All my cousins, aunts, uncles, neices, second cousins, etc. are dear to me. But these first cousins on my mom's side are special because we were all kids together and share some of these earliest good/bad memories.