Cousin Time

How the idea of "home" gets bigger when we revisit it with our kids

This weekend, my sister and brother-in-law invited our family to stay with them at the cabin in the mountains. As always happens, in the days leading up to our departure, the kids anticipated impending cousin time with a crescendo of impatience and enthusiasm. Still, no matter how willing the spirit, the flesh is always weak when it comes to making the practical arrangements necessary to get our slow-moving parade on the road. Packing is never done when it should be. Kids are never dressed when they should be. Their clothes are never where they should be. The house and van are never clean like they should be. Every family trip that we take feels like an indictment of our competence as adults, as idealistic fantasies of an orderly, efficient, and timely exit that would do credit to Prussian military efficiency collapse into an ad hoc rout as we try to scramble aboard the last helicopter out of Saigon. The past few weeks have been particularly stressful, which did not help our mood or our efficacy as we struggled with each other and our children, who radiated our stress and ill temper back towards us.

Unsurprisingly, when our overstuffed minivan left the driveway, it was less with an air of enthusiastic anticipation than of exhausted frustration. So, in yet another confirmation that I have become the parent that I (in my pre-child days) used to judge, rather than allow the kids to develop the essential life skills of self-entertainment and harmonious social interaction in a confined space, I turned on a movie.

Secret Garden poster, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Garden_(1993_film)#/media/File:Secretgarden1993.jpg

Our girls have been listening to the audiobook versions of Francis Hodgson Burnett’s novel The Secret Garden, about a spoiled, neglected, bitter little girl and her spoiled, neglected, bitter little cousin who are transformed by the beauty and the goodness of the earth in bloom. Since I had bought them the 1993 film adaptation for Christmas and they had not yet watched it, I suggested that we put it on. They agreed. Quiet fell. In the back seat, before the light dimmed too much, my oldest daughter giggled to the same Calvin and Hobbes comics (or, as she says, “Calvin and Hobbles”) that my siblings and I used to entertain ourselves with on our long road trips. And when the night fell and their attention was fully absorbed in The Secret Garden, my children rediscovered the same heartbreaking beauty of life blooming from seemingly dead earth and seemingly dead hearts that had imprinted itself in my mind those years ago. Though I could not see the screen while I drove (obviously), scenes began hazily replaying in my mind as I focused on the road ahead while half listening to the audio behind me. I have not seen it in 30 years, but even so, it is remarkable how many of its scenes remain etched in my memory.

As the road rose and twilight fell, it felt like a journey through time as well as space. Many times while growing up, my family had made that same journey in a different minivan as we travelled over the mountains to visit my dad’s family. From the passenger window then and the windshield now, I saw the same forests, mountains, rivers and reservoirs rush by, silently speeding us along our journey.

When we arrived, my sister, brother-in-law, nieces, nephews, and baby brother (now graduating from medical school and a good seven inches taller than me) came out to greet us. My kids quickly lost interest in mom and dad and paired off with their respective coeval cousins, who were eager to acquaint them with their new digs.

After pizza and root beer, it was time for bed. At least in theory. The five oldest cousins spread their sleeping bags around the playroom for the cousin slumber party, but of course the “slumber” would have to wait until the party had worked its way out. My big, bald, baby brother broke out his guitar and serenaded them, treating them to a rousing rendition of “The Stinky Bum” song (his original composition for his nieces and nephews) while they danced with abandon. Afterwards, as the mood quieted, he sang them the Peter, Paul, and Mary standard “Puff, the Magic Dragon,”[1] which our dad used to sing to us as we had drifted off to sleep when we were their age. When my daughter told my sister that she was afraid of the dark, my sister told her that she had been too when she was little, but her big brother (*ahem* that would be me) had made her feel better by telling her stories, so she could be brave too because she also had people that she loved around her and brave stories to comfort her.

After the children were in bed, the adult siblings—my sister, my baby brother, by brother-in-law, and I—gathered around the fireplace to catch up. As my childhood soundtrack Lifescapes: The Emerald Isle played in the background, memories rose like smoke of those winter evenings when we would gather as children around the brick hearth in our old house for fires on special winter evenings, drinking hot cider, listening to dad’s guitar, and watching the magical, shifting shapes of the glowing embers. Conversation is different now from what it was then, of course, but there is something magical about a shared hearth with shared company that transcends time. I guess it’s no surprise that the Spanish word often used to translate the idea of “home,” as distinct from “house” — hogar — literally means “hearth,” or that in English you can’t have a hearth without heart.

I have written elsewhere that one of the greatest blessings of being a parent is being able to relive the best parts of childhood—to become a child again, to rediscover the wonder of a life where everything was new and anything was possible. This weekend reminded me of another blessing, even greater. Being a parent means not only being able to re-experience the wonders of childhood, but to help transmit them in an intergenerational drama of redemption. Neither of my parents knew their grandparents or any of their cousins when they were growing up. While my siblings and I knew our cousins, they were mostly (with one exception) too far away, or too old, or too busy to take any regular interest in our lives. Nonetheless, even if it wasn’t always our experience that family—extended family, anyway—was everything, dad told us, over and over, like a magical incantation, that one day our siblings would be our best friends. (The occasions he chose to remind us of this incantation were precisely those when it seemed least likely to be true). But now, I wake up and find that it is true: my siblings are among my best friends. What’s more, my children are growing up knowing that their cousins are among their best friends. I am not just witnessing and re-experiencing some of the warmest memories of my childhood—some of those core experiences that most inform my idea of “home” to this day. I am watching them expand—watching “home” blossom like a flower in the secret garden of my children’s hearts, bigger and more vibrant even than it was in mine.

In conclusion, I have often focused on my own frustrations seeking identity, purpose, and meaning in a world where, professionally at least, I have struggled to find a niche. But this weekend reminded me that there are more important things than CVs, salaries, or professional plaudits. In a world where intergenerational trauma is rife and we see patterns of abuse and pathology passed down like genetic mutations, to see the process reverse itself is a rare and beautiful thing. To get to participate in that redemption is rarer and more beautiful still.

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[1] For the record, it unfortunately needs to be noted that, for us at least, this was entirely a nostalgic song about the transience of childhood and had nothing to do with “puffing the magic dragon.”