Cousins

When we were adolescent, she got mad at me as she was prone to do and scratched my face.

I could tell when she did it she was sorry. The mirror of her eyes suggested  there was blood. She had wounded her cousin but couldn’t take it back or apologize because her rage was in the way.

Later she was kind to me and we read the Sunday “funnies” splayed out on the linoleum floor.

Mom and I would go to visit my Aunt and Uncle on the other side of town. My cousin was older and  I looked up to him . I was red haired and freckled. He was dark haired and handsome and wore his clothes well.

His sister (she was my cousin too of course) would watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and scream and cry hysterically. She was school smart. We weren't at all sure what was going on but just decided to be concerned. 

Even though he was super cool, he’d always spend time with me. He had a way of making me feel wanted … like he was glad I was there. We’d wrestle on the worn carpet. I had a temper with a jacked up motor so I’d give it my all as he laughed,  grinding me into the carpet. When we’d leave I’d have rug burns and a full heart.

Another cousin was coming to Mamaw's. I hadn’t seen her in a long time. Last I remembered she had been sitting on the gargantuan back seat  of a car as I looked over my shoulder from the front  to speak. She was alone there,  her skirt spread around her like some fairy tale princess. She was pretty and clever.

We were 16 years old and I wanted my best friend to meet her. She had become even lovelier and laughed that disarming raspy laugh as we joked and she teased us. I suspected she was amused by our blushing naiveté.

Later we sat on the steps of the old farmhouse while she played the guitar and sang. I was proud … always have been … still am.

Grayed and somewhat wiser, I was there when we gathered at a local eatery after the funeral of a beloved Uncle. There were two more generations now.  She was younger,  a feisty brunette; what we in the South like to call a” pistol.”

A cousin close to my age and I were discussing our childhoods after these many passing years. It was known that mine had been “challenging”. He shared some things that came as a surprise.

The “little Pistol” turned to me, tears in her eyes,

“I had no idea. Please tell me. I want to know what your lives were like.”

Over the next weeks, I tried.  I’m not sure if it helped. I only know that I had seen her love for family in those misty eyes. She just wanted to know the truth. She had not had a lot of contact with those of us much older and only knew the stories the aunts told and a few black and white photos.  I suspect she felt that knowing our stories would help her understand how she had come to be who she was.

We figured it out one time. I have somewhere north of 30 paternal cousins.

I think about them often. One of the few redeeming graces of social media is that I at least have a window into their lives.

I could tell stories until “the cows come home.”

My twin sons were born. She came with her Mother and sat on the floor of the nursery and held them ... played with them. I barely knew her. I’d been gone rambling those many years as she grew. Yet she had come ... wanted to come. 

He doesn’t come to the reunions. Truth is his childhood was the roughest of all. We roomed together for a while in our twenties on the outskirts of town. We had so many things in common I think it confused us a bit.  The confusion was the thing we had in common the most.

Her Mother was so kind it showed even before she spoke. She was the same yet beleaguered from the beginning by illness, yet her beauty and kindness never waned.  It’s been too long. I suspect the years have had their toll like with all of us yet i know the kindness will still live in those sparkling eyes.

In the rising dawn I sat and asked God to come to me. What came were their faces until they diffused into light and we were running, laughing in a field behind the old two story schoolhouse and heard the grownups calling …. Come home, come home … it’s time to say the blessing.