When I was a little girl, I was the youngest cousin of my generation. My dad used to take me to play with my cousins, who were all at least 4 or 5 years older than I. They were his brother's kids. On one hand, I felt that his brother and his wife treated us as sort of second class citizens. My dad hadn't gone to college because of his mental and neurological illnesses, even though he had been offered an apprenticeship in vet school and scholarships. Back then, people hid their shame, and they regarded my dad's condition as shameful for the family, or at least my grandmom did.
Also, my uncle and aunt were Orthodox, pillars in their synagogues, and my parents were rather against religion. So they looked down on us for that reason, and my grandmom, who lived next to her eldest son, a brilliant scholar in something related to math (I'm not sure what), was I think the origin of this attitude.
But I dearly loved to play with my cousins. We spent weekends playing, eating waffles, making volcanoes, climbing and skating and doing boy stuff I didn't get to do by myself. My cousins were scientific sorts, always building things, developing photos, etc. It was exciting to hang out with them. Now one is an engineer, I think, the other an economist. One lives in New York, surrounded by his children and grandchildren, and the other in Israel, and his kids are about Jeremy's age. One of them wants to be a writer. He has one grandchild, who is about 2, I think.
Today they were going to visit anyway, since my Israeli cousin was working in San Diego for a couple of weeks. They were planning to see my parents at their new home. So they went to the house and met me there, and together we went to visit my dad in the hospital. I don't have any pictures, but they promised to send some, and I will post them when I get them.
We had a good visit, getting a bit lost in the new parts of UCI hospital, stopping for tea at the cafeteria, and having a good talk with dad, who seemed very tired, worse than this morning. SO many doctors were doing tests on him, taking blood, I think it was a bit too much. I hope they just let him rest for the day. He's going to be there at least for the rest of the week.
I need to figure out how to take care of his worms.
4 comments:
I think of worms as independent sorts.
How very good to get to see cousins!
Actually, they need to be fed, watered, kept out of the heat.
It was wonderful to see Don (now Dan, by his own preference)! We were always the closest of cousins as children.
Hey, hanging with the cuzzes in the cafeteria...glad they are back in your life ;)
It's Dan who I haven't seen since I was a teenager. I always felt a bond with him when we were kids.
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