A Childhood that Cannot be Lost

I visited my mother’s “favorite” cousin in Denver a month ago. I had been meaning to see her for months and finally made the effort. It was good to reconnect. She and my mom always kept up over the years, so it was a remembrance of something important to my mom.

 “Cousins are the first friends we have growing up.” That statement was true for my parents’ generation as well as my own.

My mom was big about cousins. She came from a large closely knit family in rural Eastern Iowa. She planned “cousins reunions” in her later years. When most of these cousins passed, she planned a cousins reunion for her children and her brothers’ and sister’s families. My sisters and I coordinated the event mom wanted to have. The reunion was fun since cousins were now seeing one another as adults who had not been together for years.

Meints Cousins Reunion Several Years Ago

Marion Garretty suggested, “A cousin is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.” I remember fondly the New Years Day celebrations with the Henderson side of my family. My grandparents were among the first folks to have color TVs. We would gather and awe at the Rose Bowl Parade in living color during the early 1950s. Later on those days, the cousins often did a “program” for the family. One year my grandparents returned from a trip to Hawaii and gave us all grass skirts and leis. We performed a show singing and dancing the hula in our skirts.

Although I was older, my city cousins from Chicago came every summer to “the farm” where they could indulge in farm activities like feeding the pet lambs and harvesting garden crops. One year there was a momma raccoon living in a tree where we had a tire swing. My little cousin called them “toons.” To this day, I don’t see a racoon that I don’t think of calling it a toon.

I am fortunate to have many cousins—20 on my mother’s (Meints) side and 6 on my dad’s (Henderson) side. Although four have passed away, I am able to keep in touch with others via Facebook. I didn’t get to choose my family, but it is a blessing when cousins are also friends.