Cousins

My cousin, G, is getting married in less than a week, so for her bachelorette, we headed up north to T's house for a mini weekend getaway.  We ate food, we drank wine, we giggled, we talked, we played games...we even went for a morning hike, and a indulged a midday cooking class.

When we were little, in our recent-immigrant skin, with parents that worked too many hours because life in this country is hard, G, A, and I spent a lot of time together.  In the years between 1992 and 1997, we ran a lot of races, climbed a number of backyard obstacle courses, took a lot of trips to the public library, watched a lot of PBS, buried at least one time capsule, and put on at least one fashion show.

And then in 1997 a lot of things began to change.  Eventually, I moved away.  I arrived back to New Jersey two weeks before A's wedding.  I'd been gone for seven years, traversed three continents in that time, crossed international borders 15 times, slept in too many airports.  Sun-burned and jet-lagged, I returned just in time for A to walk down the aisle to the man she'd fallen in love with.  A lot happens in seven years.

I had planned to stay in New Jersey only a few weeks.  Wanderlust is powerful, and we had planned a journey through the Midwest and the Southwest, eventually reaching the Pacific coast.  But the love of family is powerful, too.  As we sank into the comfort of familiar faces, Michael and I realized we were travel-weary, too many years of too many planes, and the wanderlust faded.  We decided to stop, to rest, to learn to be family with these people who do it so well.

In these three years, there have been weddings, births, and deaths.  Some have graduated, some have started new degrees.  Some are launching careers, some are mastering managing homes.  All of us are settling into our adult lives.  This pace is different than the pace we used to keep when we were kids.  Things keep changing and we don't get enough long, lazy afternoons eating ice cream cups and watching cartoons.  So, our mini weekend getaway, as the youngest of the Viera-Flores girls prepares to march down the aisle, played out--inadvertently I think--like a "throw back" to the mid-1990s.  We changed the locale and added some new faces, with T and L and the little ones, Ab, E, and R, but we still overate, we still laughed too hard, we still shared secrets, and managed to include one obstacle course in the form of a morning hike through Tillman's Ravine.

How wonderful, after fifteen years of too many changes, to arrive back to the glory of childhood: adventures with cousin.