Family Matters

I am terrible with the phone. E-mail is one of my main forms of communication to most of my loved ones and it is getting really bad. I am trying to get better.

As a kick-start to my goal of calling people more often, I phoned my cousin, Kiki, last night just to say hi and see how she was doing. I very rarely do this even though I love her like a sister. I am an only child but my parents made sure I was very close to my extended family. Many of my cousins, second cousins, and second cousins once removed, etc. flew up from Texas, Louisiana, and Virginia for the wedding. It meant more to me than they will ever know.

As we chatted about work, kids, husbands and life, I realized (as I do every time I see or talk to her) how much I love having her in my world, no matter how infrequently we get to spend time together. All of my cousins touch my life in a different way and I wish more than anything that I could be with them more often.

Now that our grandmother has died, we don't have as many excuses to get together and it scares me. We had always made the effort before and hopefully we will now. Soon we will all be starting families, if we haven't already, which will just make things harder. I hope we have the strength to keep this close-nit family going, no matter how far apart we are or how complicated things get. We need each other.

In this picture, my three closest cousins and I are with my great Aunt Rosemary, back when we were young and sweet. I am the blonde, Kiki is the brunette.