Cousins, Continued

Cousins are among the first friends chosen for you.

In childhood, the relationship runs on family momentum. Adults make the plans, open the doors, and put everyone in the same room. You arrive, pick up where you left off, and never wonder who made the reunion possible.

Adulthood removes that machinery.

Lives spread across countries and states. Calendars harden. Work, marriage, children, and distance make even the simplest visit an act of coordination. A cousin can slowly become someone you remember warmly but rarely see.

Or the relationship can become something better.

I have had the joy of building a relationship with my American cousins deep into adulthood. We are no longer close simply because our parents put us together. We are close because, over the years, we have continued to make the trip, send the message, and find our way back into the same room.

There is something rare in that kind of friendship. A cousin holds part of your origin story but meets you in the present. They know the family mythology, the inherited habits, the old versions of everyone involved. Yet they can also know the person you became elsewhere.

The photograph of us in Florida is simple: three adults, arms around one another, laughing in a living room. But it contains decades. The childhood relationship is still there, now joined by the friendship we made ourselves.

Family gives you the introduction. Time reveals whether you will keep it.

I am very glad we did.