Cousines

Have you ever not known something was missing in your life until it wasn't missing any more? That's what has been impacting my life - with questions, confusion, the desire to know more, and joy. What a wonderful gift to add new relatives to my life! Well, they have always been out there, I just didn't know them and have access to them in the same way many families do.
Mom is the eighth of nine siblings from a small town in Kansas. There is no photograph with all of them together. When they left home, they scattered across the country, and as I grew up, I knew my Dad's parents and of his sister and her children. I remember meeting my mom's mother and a cousin named Roxie when I was 5 or 6, but little about the meeting. At 16, I went with Mom to visit her older brother in Kansas, and became close friends with my cousin, Cindy for the few days we were there... we wrote for a while, but didn't see each other again. I remember the phone call Mom got when her mom died, and I remember asking Mom if she was an orphan now. I met her younger brother, and her oldest sister, but didn't really know any of her siblings as they began to pass away. I thought that contact among them was inconsistent as they pursued careers and raised families. Mom is now the only sister (of four), and there is one brother (of five) still living.

In the last decade, Mom has connected two of my cousins who were interested in family history, and they each shared with their sisters. Together with Mom, they located a fifth (the very same Roxie) and a drew in a sixth cousin, and I learned about all of this with a jolt when Roxie came to Seattle for a visit last fall. She told of the cousins' work on the family tree and their annual research trip to accomplish the various searches. My brother and I were stunned to realize that we have 28 or so first cousins across the country, that there have been some family reunions, and that they have been getting to know each other.
Meeting Roxie again was the open door for me - an e-mail to Cindy and to Debbie (a cousin I didn't remember since we met as toddlers) to indicate my interest in family roots was all it took. I began receiving e-mail pieces of their extensive research, Cindy and I renewed our friendship, and I learned that Mom, two of her sisters, and one of her brothers had baby girls the same year: Debbie, Roxie, Cindy... and me. These three, with Cindy's sister, Jeanne, and Debbie's sister, Judi, along with a younger cousin, Lisa, make up (to varying degrees, as their lives allow) the search party looking for family roots. They have fun at it, having organized a sort of girl gang and referring to themselves as the Black Doggettes after the "Black Dog" gang that Cindy's dad was in when he was a teen. They wear red and black, named a Scottie dog as their mascot, and it turns out all of us are more dog people than cat people. In June, I met all but Lisa at Cindy & Jeanne's mother's house in Oklahoma. We drove from there to the town in Missouri where our maternal Grandmother was born and raised. We bonded with laughter and shared memories of our parents' stories - I'm the only one with a living parent from their family. I knew the least of all, so my trip was filled with revelations, new understanding, new old friends, questions, and surprises. By sharing what our parents had told about family events and memories, we were filling in gaps and giving more perspective, so the search is more than academic. We feel like we are building a glimpse of personalities, and the best part is doing it together. The trip culminated in an unplanned visit on my way to the airport to the town where our parents grew up. It is on Route 66, and has diminished over the years as the freeways changed the travel patterns. Our interest was less about the town and more about meeting our sole living uncle, who purchased a house and moved back to this town earlier this year. At 83, Uncle Harold is spry, determined in the restoration of his house, and has a million stories to tell. For me, meeting another of my Mom's older brothers for the first time, and having three of my cousins to introduce me, was a thrill, like living our history. Lucky me!