Tag Archives: family

Cousins

Posted by Esperanza in Thoughtful Thursdays and tagged with ,

The comments on my Monday Snapshot, plus being here in St. Louis with aunts, uncles and cousins, has me thinking a lot about extended family and what I worry my child(ren) will not have.

My mother has a very large family–eleven brothers and sisters. Most of them have MANY children themselves and a couples of her brothers are already great grandparents. When we get together for Christmas Eve we have to rent out a fireman’s hall and now that most of the cousins have kids (and some of their kids have kids!) we don’t really fit there anymore; we can’t all sit to eat at the same time.

My father’s family was much smaller–he has two sisters close in age. While I knew, and we somewhat close to a couple of families on my mother’s side, it was my father’s sister and their five children that I was close to growing up.

Of course, I grew up in Hong Kong and California and all my cousins lived in St. Louis so I didn’t see them most of the year. But when we lived overseas we spent most of every summer in St. Louis and that is when I became so close with my cousins. My family stayed at my grandmother’s house and we had sleepovers at different aunts’ houses. The seven of us were quite close, especially the youngest five (of which I was the oldest). We would spend most of the summer together, including a week every year at the Ozarks. Those are great memories and I will cherish them always.

My sister is seven years younger than I (she turned 26 this April) and doesn’t ever plan on having kids. I know people can change their minds on that but I doubt my sister will. She is not a fan of children and is fiercely protective of the small pleasures in life, like waking up whenever she wants and spending long hours enjoying an expensive meal. I would be surprised if she ever changed her mind about having kids and even if she did, mine will most assuredly be in the double digits before she does. I can’t imagine they’d be close cousins.

Mi.Vida’s sister is 28 and while she has a Master’s in Early Childhood Development and currently teaches Kindergarten, her life circumstances assure that she won’t be having children anytime soon. She hasn’t been in a committed relationship in all the seven years that I’ve known her and she just left her teaching job in Guatemala to spent two years teaching in Kazakhstan. I do think she’ll have kids some day, but by the time that happens my children will be much older than hers.

That effectively leaves my children without cousins and it’s a gaping hole in their life that I lament them going without.

Mi.Vida has cousins but isn’t at all close to them. In fact, he has four that live less than an hour away (near their mother–his aunt) that I’ve never met. He has other cousins in LA but I’ve never even learned their names. To say he is not close to his extended family would be a laughable understatement (and I find this so strange, as his parents are incredibly involved in our lives). I guess it makes sense that Mi.Vida doesn’t think much of the fact that our kids will be without cousins. He never really had them and he didn’t seem to miss them so he doesn’t see it as a problem that our kids will share his fate. It just isn’t something he things about.

But I think about it, all the time. My childhood memories would be woefully incomplete without my cousins. I can’t fathom growing up without them.

Sadly, as we’ve grown into adulthood, we’ve lost a lot of the connection that once kept us so close (though we continue to thoroughly enjoy each other’s company when we visit). We only see each other once every other year or so, at reunions like the one I’m here for right now. My grandmother is definitely the impetus for our visits and I wonder if my family will still come much once she is gone. Only three of the seven of the cousins even live in St. Louis anymore, and one will probably be moving away again soon after he finishes residency. My closest cousin–the one with the daughter Isa’s age and the son who will be a year older than mine (assuming my own son arrive safely like hers did)–lives in Charleston, which couldn’t really be farther away from San Francisco. So far we’ve met up twice since we had our children, both times here in St. Louis (she stays with her parents and I stay with my grandmother). Again, I wonder if I’ll make it out here to see her much, if at all, once my grandmother is gone.

I figure the best case scenario is we continue visiting my aunts, uncles and cousins every two years or so and that my kids know my cousin’s children from those meager visits. The reality will probably be more infrequent, with visits becoming fewer and farther between as everyone grows older. Certainly my children will never have the connection with their “cousins” that I had with my own.

The fact that none of my close friends live near me, and that none of them have kids yet, means my kids won’t even have honorary cousins to grow up with. And I suppose that will have to be okay. We all have different experiences growing up and I certainly can’t guarantee that my kids will enjoy all the special things that I felt gave meaning to my childhood and shaped me into the person I am today. I suppose I’ll just have to have faith that they will find what they need to be happy, and meet the people with whom they will forge meaningful relationships, even if those people are not provided by family connections.

Still, it makes me sad to think my kids will miss out on something that was such a positive influence in my own life. I with I could give them what I had, that their photobooks would be filled with pictures cousins all standing in a row, from oldest to youngest, so sure of their place in their lives and in their family. It really was an amazing gift, one I so wish I could give my own kids.

Were cousins a big part of your life? Will they be a fixture in your child(ren)’s?

Ambivalent

Posted by Esperanza in Confessional Fridays, Stumbling through Motherhood, Stumbling through TTC and tagged with , , , ,

I have been feeling increasingly… ambivalent, lately. This feeling extends to pretty much every part of my life. I am ambivalent about keeping my house in decent shape. I’m ambivalent about doing all the needs be done to ensure I’m prepared for work on Monday. I’m ambivalent about putting in the time and energy with my partner. I’m ambivalent about working on my book, which I’m pretty sure will never be published.

I’m ambivalent about having another baby.

Isa is an amazing girl. Truly, I do believe she is special. People tell me it all the time. Total strangers who meet us at the park assure me that she is a truly unique little girl. She has incredibly energy and a wonderful personality. I feel incredibly blessed to be entrusted with the responsibility of guiding her through this life.

Isa is an amazing girl. She is also incredibly stubborn and strong willed. She wants what she wants when she wants it. Her reactions to disappointment are intense and visceral. She throws herself on the floor. She screams. She hits. She purposefully hurst me. She writhes and twists and makes it impossible to contain her. Her physical strength is astounding; there has been more than one occasion when I’ve been unable to keep her safe from herself, when her head has struck the concrete with brutal force, when she’s given herself bumps or bruises or cuts.

There has been more than one occasion when I’ve totally and completely failed as a mother.

I know that what I’m describing is normal toddler behavior. I know that every mom of a child under four has experienced these things. But the thing is, I NEVER see other kids doing these things. Isa has had so many melt downs in public–at the park, at the grocery store–places with tons of other kids and I NEVER see other kids throwing tantrums like the ones she throws. And Isa throws these kinds of tantrums frequently, every day, many times a day.

Isa is only 1.5 years old. Whenever I admit to other mothers that I feel out of my depth, that this age is much harder than I had anticipated, they assure me that I have no idea what I’m in for, that 2.5 and 3.5 are SO MUCH HARDER. When they say that, something inside me dies. I have a really hard time not crying.

Why do I think I can handle another baby when this one already challenges me so much? Why do I think I can even handle being pregnant when sometimes my own daughter can overpower me? Why do I think I make it work with two when I’m failing so miserably with one?

Isa, losing her shit because she has to wait three minutes for the carousel.

Sometimes, when I come home from a particularly hard afternoon at the park, when Isa has fought putting on her socks, her shoes, her jacket, her hat, getting her diaper changed, not bringing five stuffies with us, going outside, walking down the street, holding my hand, pretty much everything I’ve requested she do, when I’ve failed to keep her head from crashing against the ground–as the eyes of ten parents remain trained, intently, on us–I wonder how I could ever be so foolish as to try to have another baby.

When I feel so defeated at the end of the day that I just want to crawl into a dark hole and never come out, I ask myself, what are you thinking wanting to do this again? How will you ever manage two when you can’t even manage one? 

When Mi.Vida and I get in an argument just because we’re exhausted, because we have nothing left, I implore myself, You will ruin your relationship! Please don’t throw away everything you have!

Because sometimes, a lot of the time, it feels like having another child will be the end of me, the end of this life I’m struggling to keep a hold of as it is, the end of my relationship, my friendships, what little creative freedom I have left.

If I’m struggling this much just to parent one child, how on earth can I ever parent two?

Yeah. I’m feeling pretty ambivalent about it all.