I have two first cousins....

Brunsli's post about meeting one of here 53 paternal cousins for the first time got me thinking about my family. I have two first cousins, on my father's side and they are about 8-10 years older than me. They also grew up in CA so I never got to know them all that well.

I have 8 second cousins, 2 are the children of my father's uncle and 6 are the sons of my mother's aunt. Yes, I have a great aunt who had 6 sons! My great uncle was good with those Y chromosomes! And just about all of these cousins have children who are older than me, some significantly.

And then we get to the 3rd cousins and this is when it gets a little harder to count but it still doesn't come close to 53! My father's side is still pretty easy. One second cousin had 2 children, the oldest is 16. But on my mother's side, each of those sons' of my great aunt had multiple children, except one. I think I can count just about all of them because they all pretty much stayed in the city where I grew up, except for the kids of one of the older ones because he lived somewhere else and didn't come back that often. So third cousins equals 9 plus maybe 2 or 3 from the cousin who I don't know well. But the thing was a bunch of these cousins were the same age and I was about 4 years younger than the youngest of most of them and at least 4 years older than the 3 youngest ones.

Four years is a big difference when you are a kid. It is the difference between 2nd and 6th grade, 5th and 9th grade, 8th and 12th grade and that is a big difference! So I never really felt connected to those older 3rd cousins, who were all pretty close. Same thing but the opposite way for the younger ones, plus they were all boys which added another dynamic.

So this, combined with the fact that I am an only child (I have mentioned that before, haven't I?) means that I have never really felt that close-knit big family feeling. I am not complaining and I probably have had a lot less drama in my life as a result but sometimes I think it would be nice....