Weird Family Connection of the Day
Sep. 14th, 2008 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feste_sylvainI'm not particularly close to most of my family. My parents, sure, but my brother lives a whopping twenty miles from here, and we hardly ever see each other. (We make it a point to invite him and his wife to our large parties, and they do come to some of them, but they're either much more introverted than we are or they're just plain freaked. I'm leaning towards introverted, as they do come back.)
I met one of my first cousins (my father's sister's daughter) last month on that trip to South Dakota. She remembered meeting me when I was eight or so, but I didn't remember her at all. I barely remember meeting her younger sister once; I did meet the other two (for a total of four), but that was over thirty years ago.
Likewise, I haven't seen my mother's brother's three kids in around the same length of time. So that's seven first cousins I barely know.
I know of at least two second cousins, both on my father's side. One of them is a published author whom my brother has met at a book signing. I've read some of his books. The other had my room at RPI's summer program for high school students for the first session, and I had the room for the second session. That was freaky. But we didn't meet.
I just got a call tonite from one of my third cousins. Yes, we have the same great-great-grandparents. I met her a whopping total of once, at my grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary in Pierre (pronounced "peer") South Dakota back in 1978. She was a California blonde with a Farrah flip back then.
Now, she lives around ten miles from me. And she just inherited a bunch of family photos and letters, many of which were written by my late grandmother. We'll be meeting up to talk about these, and see how much family tree we can remember.
I always feel so awkward around family; in a way, they know the down-to-earth part of me that my friends don't connect to. But they don't know who I am, for all that they know where I'm from. I never feel like I can be myself around them.
We'll see whether that's true of a third cousin.
I met one of my first cousins (my father's sister's daughter) last month on that trip to South Dakota. She remembered meeting me when I was eight or so, but I didn't remember her at all. I barely remember meeting her younger sister once; I did meet the other two (for a total of four), but that was over thirty years ago.
Likewise, I haven't seen my mother's brother's three kids in around the same length of time. So that's seven first cousins I barely know.
I know of at least two second cousins, both on my father's side. One of them is a published author whom my brother has met at a book signing. I've read some of his books. The other had my room at RPI's summer program for high school students for the first session, and I had the room for the second session. That was freaky. But we didn't meet.
I just got a call tonite from one of my third cousins. Yes, we have the same great-great-grandparents. I met her a whopping total of once, at my grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary in Pierre (pronounced "peer") South Dakota back in 1978. She was a California blonde with a Farrah flip back then.
Now, she lives around ten miles from me. And she just inherited a bunch of family photos and letters, many of which were written by my late grandmother. We'll be meeting up to talk about these, and see how much family tree we can remember.
I always feel so awkward around family; in a way, they know the down-to-earth part of me that my friends don't connect to. But they don't know who I am, for all that they know where I'm from. I never feel like I can be myself around them.
We'll see whether that's true of a third cousin.
