“My cousin is promoting a week where you don’t eat dairy or meat.” Joe’s eyes roll back. Oh yeah. I forgot again. WHICH cousin. My dad was the eldest of 10 children born in the south of the Netherlands. My mom was the third child in a family of 4 with Sicilian roots. Her mother was one of 8 children. Do the math. I have a LOT of cousins. 20 first cousins on the Dutch side and many different types of cousins on the Sicilian side. I haven’t figured out how many. To give Joe his due, if I feed him the name of a Dutch cousin, he knows enough to place them in the family hierarchy. Who is their uncle? Name of their mother. Siblings. He’s even pretty good with their partners’, wives’, and husbands’ names. On their children’s names, he is arguably better than I am. And he’s asked for special dispensation to ignore any cousin on the Sicilian side who is not a first cousin. I can’t blame him. It’s hard enough for me to keep track of the hierarchy of my mother’s cousins. I do know enough so that once when Joe asked me who exactly we were having dinner with, I could draw the ancestry chart on a whiteboard. It stayed up for some time.
With so many people, the diversity of occupations is stunning. I have cousins who are/were astrophysicists, event planners, IT techs, bus drivers, petroleum plant worker, doctors (physician and PhDs in different topics), teachers, professors, engineers, estate sales specialists, international developmental specialist and more. And strangely enough, I have a very high trust level on these folks. I once needed a babysitter for a couple of weeks on an urgent basis. I put out the word to my cousins and one volunteered for a two week trip to our home outside London. I didn’t censor the list at all. It turns out the cousin who arrived at my doorstep was into theatre and spent her free evenings in the city taking in the shows.
They are also willing to pitch in at a moment. On one business trip to the Netherlands, my luggage was lost in transit. By the time we came back from dinner to the hotel, one amazing cousin had rounded up business clothes for the next day’s meetings. The look on my US bosses’ face was priceless as the front desk clerk handed over a paper bag with clothing. Oh yes, we are also around the same size and have been known to swap shoes around at family events if ours become uncomfortable – or even if we want to try a new style.
One cousin came for a visit and volunteered to help me get a small flat ready for rental. Lucky for all of us that he was tall and a dab hand at hanging curtains. He’s also very funny. He had arrived at my house when I was at work and when I got home, my son greeted me with sparkles in his eyes saying “He’s great fun!”
If you wanted to start a company and only hire people related to me directly or via close relationship, you could staff most of it, no problem. They are, collectively an amazing group of people. And caring, too. As my children graduated from college, I encouraged them to Link in with relatives to extend their professional network quickly. One cousin’s husband even coached my son through his interview prep. And he got the job.
On the cousin front, I am very lucky. So, thanks to my cousin (the physician) I now try and eat less meat. I prepare vegan and vegetarian dishes in the fridge and dip into them when I’m hungry.
And on the Dutch side, we love to hang out together. Last summer we met up with 70+ of my nearest and dearest relatives in an ex-convent in the Netherlands. It’s the only place big and cheap enough to hold all of us as we chat, eat buffet meals and play in the sun for 2 1/2 days. Here’s to all of us – cousins and our next get together in 2024.
Happy days!
theSchureThing 