Reconnecting

I only know two people in the entire world besides myself who are related to my mother by blood: my uncle, who is her cousin, and my cousin, who is her second cousin.  And no, there was no incest involved.  Adoption, actually; my mom and my uncle were cousins who were adopted by the same family.

 
 

When I was little, my cousin and I were close.  We lived an hour apart, so it wasn't a matter of riding our bikes to each other's houses on summer afternoons or anything, but most weekends, my parents and I visited my grandparents, and my cousin was often there too. We were, besides being cousins, very good friends at that point in our lives.

 

As we got older, we drifted apart a little. This was due in part to things going on in our respective and shared families and in part to the simple fact that we were growing up and getting involved in different things in life. Every so often, we managed a visit or a weekend together or even a week over Christmas break or something, but we didn't see each other on a regular basis. We sent letters to one another at times, and later emailed, but we weren't as close as when we were little. Still, she was the closest thing I had to a sister. It's funny, because I often felt like I knew her better than anyone else did, but it never occurred to me until recently that she knew me that way too.

 

Toward the beginning of her high school career and the end of mine, our lives were pushed closer together than they'd ever been before. She moved in with my parents and me. I was excited beyond words that I was finally going to have a "sister." I was tired of being an only child. Our relationship blossomed into sisterhood almost immediately. We were the closest of friends with the ability to hate each other instantly at any second. We buoyed each other up during the bad times and, occasionally, we knocked each other down during the good ones. As the "older sister," I defended/protected my cousin from my parents and exposed her faults and wrongdoing to them, depending on my mood. We did just about everything together, and although there were times when I wished I could be with just my friends and not my cousin, mostly I was always glad she was there. I didn't have to pretend when she was around, didn't have to try to be cool. She knew me and accepted me, the real me, the way I was, and her presence gave me the confidence to express that side of me even in front of people I didn't trust as fully. She was a built-in companion, conspirator, and source of moral support. I hope I was the same for her.

 

There were things about my cousin that drove me crazy, and I'm sure she had her issues with me, too. The things about her, good and bad, that upset me the most, though, were the things that made me feel the most insecure, made me question my own motives and self worth the most. I suppose that's how it is with siblings, who grow up side by side and compare themselves to one another constantly. Overall, though, having her live with us was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me. It was good to have someone to connect with, someone who wasn't my parents but who knew me just as well. Someone who "got" me.

 

Eventually, she moved out. The events leading up to that, and her actual move, were fairly traumatic sudden. A lot of that had to do with my mom's declining physical health and stress level. And a lot of it probably had to do with the fact that my mom and my cousin were dealing with very similar mental health patterns, which made it hard for them to live under the same roof. I didn't understand that at the time, because I had mostly escaped, up to that point, the mental anguish they experienced. Now that that part of my genetic code and life experiences have caught up with me, I understand a little better. I might have seen it back then, a little bit, but I think I tried to hide from it. It hurt that my cousin shared something with my mom that I could not share, even if it was mental chaos.

 

After she moved out, I was grateful for the time I had alone with my mom, because her health was getting worse and worse, and I dealt with that best by being almost her sole means of support and assistance. It made me feel like I was doing something to help, I suppose, and I think I would have resented intrusion on our relationship just then.

 

But even more, I missed my cousin. As mom got sicker, I wished she was there to offer me support, to help me escape from time to time, to take some of the responsibility off my shoulders, to laugh with. We'd always made a good team that way. I wanted to reach out to her during that time, but because of the circumstances under which she'd left my house, I felt like somehow I might betraying my mom if I did. Instead, I waited anxiously for news of her, and for the few moments when our paths crossed naturally. I feel a little guilty, even now, that I didn't try harder, but there are times during life when you can only do what you need to do to survive and everything else just takes too much energy. That was one of those times.

 

My cousin talked to my mother on the day that my mother died. My mom told me that, when it happened, but I didn't believe her because her mind was slipping away, made foggy by the toxins left in her blood by dialysis treatments that didn't work. We hadn't been to my grandma's house much around that time because my mom was too sick to travel much other than for her thrice-weekly dialysis treatments. And my grandma's mind was foggy by then, too. As a result, we didn't know, or at least I didn't, that my cousin was living with my grandma and my uncle.

 

I've never talked to my cousin about this, and I don't know if she's ever made the connection, but the night that my mom died, she—my mom, not my cousin—called my grandma. She and my grandma had a very confusing—to me, anyway—conversation, because both of their minds were in another dimension. When my mom got off the phone, she told me, "_____ gave me hugs." (I'm leaving my cousin's name out of this out of respect for her privacy—I don't like to identify others in my writing without their permission.) Not knowing that my cousin was at my grandma's house, I simply smiled and nodded. Later, once I found out that my cousin had answered the phone that night, I would come to see my mom's simple sentence—"_____ gave me hugs"—as assurance that, no matter what words had passed between my mom and my cousin, they had forgiven one another for anything that begged forgiveness between them.

 

The day after my mom died, my father and I drove to my grandmother's house to deliver the news in person. My cousin was there. After my dad told my grandmother that her only daughter had passed away, my cousin and I snuck away and went for a walk. In my mind, anyway, we snuck away. I'm not sure anymore if it was her idea or my idea or someone else's suggestion entirely, but in any case, we went for a walk around the block, the same trek we had made on foot, tricycle, bicycle, and roller skates so many times as kids. It was the first moment in which we were adults together, she barely eighteen years old and I barely twenty. It was also the first moment in the twelve or so hours since my mother had died that father was out of my sight for more than a minute or two, but old, familiar comforts got me through: the grass growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk. The way my feet somehow remembered, from my childhood, where the sidewalk had crumbled and left a hole or been lifted by roots, and avoided those spots. The black-topped parking lot, half the block long, next to my grandma's house. The church across the street. The day care center around the corner. The overgrown hedges. My grandma's overgrown garden. Most of all, my cousin walking beside me, not talking, just being there. I felt like maybe, just maybe, I could survive.

 

That was twelve years ago now. Afterwards, my cousin and I lost touch again. We e-mailed back and forth occasionally, found each other on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, texted or talked on our cell phones once we had them. Every so often, I might pick up my cousin and have her over for a night or two. But since she had moved out of our house, she had moved a few times to a few different places before she moved back home, and life just kept us from being as close as we had been. We mainly drifted in and out of people's lives.

 

It seems like maybe we are back in each other's lives to stay now. At least, we are closer than we have been in a long time and it has lasted longer than it has in a long time. I hope it is a permanent change, because I enjoy my adult relationship with her. I am learning a lot of things about her, and about me, that I never knew before.

 

I am learning that we have a lot more in common than I would ever have thought, and that many of the things we have in common are things we both have in common with my mother, from our habits to our insecurities to our sense of humor. I don't know how much of that has to do with our genes and how much of it has to do with our experiences living with my mom, but I am sure we are both influenced by each.

 

I feel like I am getting to know my mom better, even though she has been dead for twelve years, because I see so many of her behaviors in my cousin, and recognize them in myself, and because my cousin and I can talk about them, I feel as if I understand my mother's perspective more deeply. I understand her struggles. I feel closer to her. And even more than the deeper connection I feel with my mother, I feel a deeper connection with my cousin. Family used to be important to me, but as I grew up and developed my own life, I found that I don't have very much in common with my father's family. There is no family strife or fighting; we get along fine. We just don't have much in common. On the other hand, I have worlds of things in common with my cousin. It feels good to spend time with someone who knows me.

 

I have to admit that I have probably been part of the reason we did not reconnect earlier in our lives. In following her over the years, it because clear to me that she was developing relationships in life and experiencing things in life that seemed unobtainable to me. She was involved in relationships with men when I was never so lucky. She moved away and lived in other places, whereas I was afraid to leave my friends and family, afraid that I would be alone and unable to forge relationships. I avoided her at times because to spend time with her would have been to rub my face in all the things I wanted and could not have. I assumed, even though I knew her and should have known better, that she would be eager to rub those things in my face.

 

I'm glad that she had the strength and the willingness to keep forging our relationship when I did not. I'm not good at being weak, and that was a major weakness I faced. Now, we are a more steady presence in each other's lives, and it feels good. It feels good because once again, there is someone in my life that I can be my whole, real self with. She introduced me to her fiancé, and to a friend of his who has become a very good friend of mine, and when I am with the three of them, I am happier than I have been in a very, very long time. I feel connected to myself again, and I feel connected to my mom again, and I owe it all to my cousin because she fought to reconnect with me when I was fighting so hard against it.

 

It's good to be back.