Family Ties

You know… one of the things I miss by being so far away from home is time spent with family – not just immediate family either.  Before I moved to Georgia back when I was 13, I used to live in S. California where most of my cousins (about 16 of us) were within a 30 mile radius.  It would be so much fun when the whole extended family got together at someone’s house to have a meal together and just hang out.  I guess this is one of the reasons why I like having people over so much.  To me, a full house is a happy house. 

But now, my nearest relatives are about 400 miles away – and to drive there I’d have to fight the traffic of 4 major metropolitan areas.  Most of the cousins have moved away from each other and now we’re scattered all over the place, spanning from Korea, to Argentina, to 4 or 5 different states.  So I don’t get to see them that often.  One of my cousins pointed out that if it weren’t for weddings and funerals, we’d probably never see each other.

This past week I’ve had the pleasure of entertaining my cousin Nancy, her husband Steve, and their three sons, Tim (13), Nicky (8), and little Nathan (4), while they were visiting me during a leg of their week-long visit to the east coast.  It’s been a blessing even though most of the things we did were not exciting my any means.  It’s mostly been quiet moments of playing UNO™ or talking about school and church.  Surprisingly the TV has been off most of the time.

But there are moments that remind me of the connection I have with my family, and it makes me smile inside.  I know, I know… it’s probably another symptom of old age – so save the jokes.  The other day at dinner Nancy pointed out that Tim is developping a patch of white hair just like I did when I turned 13.  She also told me that almost everyone in our family had premature gray of some sort sometime in their lives – it’s a family trait.  And as I was driving Tim from the restaurant I taught him how to engine brake with a manual transmission.  This instantly brought back memories of how Nancy’s older brother used to take us out for drives and freak us out with his crazy driving techniques.  Whenever we’d pass through a long tunnel, he would let us stick our heads out of the windows and scream our heads off.  And when we would exit the tunnel and shout, “Let’s go again, Sunny, let’s go again!” he would turn around and go through the tunnel again.  Then today at breakfast, I asked Nicky what his favorite foods were, and he said it was Honey Nut Cheerios®and Subway® sandwiches.  I thought it was a weird coincidence that it was the exact exclusive dietary regimen of my little brother for most of his sophomore year in college.  Also yesterday, Nancy was telling me a story about how she unknowingly met my sister’s best friend who mentioned to her that Nancy reminded her of her best friend because of her mannerisms and the way she talked.  They were shocked when they found out it was my sister because my cousin and my sister don’t look anything alike and yet this person was able to see the connection through just mannerisms.  It’s not surprising because my sister adored Nancy growing up and I’m sure subconsciously imitated her.

And this may be the corniest thing I’ve ever written in this thing, but there were moments this past week where I caught tiny glimpses of what it might feel like to be a father.  I was so proud as I was giving Tim pointers on how to play guitar and he was picking it up like an old pro.  Or when I was helping Nicky with his fractions homework and a light went on in his eyes when I explained to him the difference between numerators and denominators.  Or when little Nathan sheepishly walked into the room to inform us that he accidentally pooped in his pants a little (he’s going to kill me if he ever finds this as he’s surfing the web years from now).  Each morning as I would leave the house to go to work, Nicky and little Nathan were there to see me off… and it just made me want to come home even faster to see them again.

I’m going to miss them when they go back home this Saturday.  They’ve made this house so much happier since they’ve been here.  My cousin was worried that they were imposing by living here and driving my car around.  But the guest rooms they’re using sit empty most of the year, and the SUV they’ve been driving just sits in front of my house unless I have stuff to haul.  What they’ve given me this week was so much more valuable, so much more precious than any inconvenience to me or wear and tear on a beatup car.  For a few days they gave me a family.  How can one even compare?