Contributing writer
One of the lovely things about growing up in the country, surrounded by your kin, was that you always had cousins to play with. There’s a picture hanging on the wall of the cousins in my mother’s generation — 27 of them in the photograph, with my mother being one of the youngest. There were more to come.
Since they mostly lived in the area and mostly went to the same church and eventually to the same school, there were always cousins for company, sometimes best friends, and often devilment. Those interactions with cousins comprised a lot of childhood memories.
In photographs of my early birthday celebrations, it’s my cousins James, Janice, Marilyn, and Caroline in the pictures. In Jessica’s early pictures, it is Virginia, Joe, Steve, and Gary in the faded photos. Plenty of cousins to go around for each 10-year span of kids.
My mother had a lot of cousins; but two were her favorites. Her cousin, Martin, was one of them and his younger sister, Emma, was her best friend whom she kept in contact with all of her days. There were things that only a cousin could understand. It was wonderful to have a cousin in your corner.
My cousins were never best friends because I only saw them at family occasions; but they were still a comfort, offering family stability even if you were far away. They were my link to the past, even if I only shared a meal with them once in a blue moon at family reunions.
This year, my little grandson was at the annual Schubert family reunion in Ramona, and he sat at a table with his generation, lovingly called “My Cousins’ Kids’ Kids Table.” He’s just approaching the stage of honestly playing with other children, instead of alongside them, and I wonder, will these once-a-year encounters really bond him with these extended cousins of his?
By contrast, in California he has cousins that he sees weekly. After their long stay in Kansas, my daughter stopped to say “Hi” to her in-laws and the cousins were there. Dagfinnr joined in the play and even though Jana was tired and just wanted to go home, she stayed and watched the cousins rough-tumbling in the yard and staging make-believe games.
I wish I had a neighborhood full of cousins for Dagfinnr to play with when he comes to Kansas, but I don’t. Times have changed. He’s the only child in our immediate family and I have to be content with offering other adventures in the country other than a corner full of cousins. We have a tractor to drive, lawns to mow, tomatoes to pick, a pond for throwing stones, fish to feed, a cat to terrorize, an aunt that giggles delightfully when she plays with him, and a grandma that loves hide-and-seek in the dark. No immediate cousins.
It was the cousins and our collective memories that drew my sister and I back to Kansas 20 years ago.
It was a hot summer day and we’d already had our chicken wings and baked beans catered at the hall. Now, we gathered at Aunt Anna and Uncle Walter’s farm for leftovers. While our parents gathered inside, the cousins started walking toward the pasture, telling stories, sharing memories.
We spanned probably 30 years in our ages and we really didn’t know each other very well.
“Let’s tell each other about some turning point in our lives,” my sister suggested, “and I’ll start.”
When we returned to the kitchen at Aunt Anna’s it was almost dark. Something had happened to the cousins, Aunt Gertie could tell.
“What have you been talking about?” she wanted to know.
“You had to have been there,” someone answered. “You have to be willing to share.”
It was just another day in the country but from that day forward we all knew, for sure, now and always, that we would always have cousins in our corner. That’s why the house that stands on D Street in Ramona is called Cousin’s Corner. It’s a reminder to celebrate those precious connections.