15. COUSINS I

Last night I fell asleep in my comfy chair. I have a particular gift for dipping into rather vivid dreams quite quickly, and when I awaken the dream drifts to the surface with me. I can fall asleep for five minutes and awaken with a full dream completed in my brain. If I walk softly into the realm of reality I can keep the dream for quite a while. This is especially sweet when the dream is good. 

Last night's sweet dream was a visit with my cousins. In the imaginary space that was some mix between their homes in Idaho and their cabin on the Snake River, my siblings and I entered the space where they were gathered. They rose from their seats and embraced us, pressing their beating hearts against ours, kissing our cheeks, exclaiming delight, asking if we were hungry and shifting the pillows to make room for us to sit hip to hip. Is there not something entirely divine about people who make you feel so special that the whole awful state of the world sort of sifts into thin air and all we are left with is the joy of each others' presence?

Because I am child number six of seven, born to a mother who was child number ten of eleven, there were not many cousins near my age. In fact, no one was in my grade or Libby's, even though ours is a really large family. My Aunt Becky, Mom's only younger sibling, provided the cousins with whom I share the most memories of summer vacations in Idaho. Because we were the outliers, moving to Pennsylvania when I was just five-years-old, the memories I hold with my cousins are limited and precious: floating the canal in cutoff jean shorts on over-inflated truck inner tubes. Sleeping out in the back yard, the aroma of fresh cut alfalfa soothing us against the familiar smell of molten slag of our Pittsburgh hometown. Cutting across neighbors yards on the way to church Sunday morning, charmed by the thought that we could just walk to church instead of driving. The taste of fresh picked raspberries. The sound of wheels on gravel. The rush of irrigation water covering the lawn on Tuesday evenings. My teenage self woke to the melodies of Carole King playing on the Hi-Fi in Aunt Becky's living room, the strains of You've Got a Friend floating through the screen.  Laughing at my cousin Jane's silly song lyrics as she dressed for work moving irrigation pipe at a farm across town. The taste of no bake cookies cooling in round blobs on sheets of waxed paper on the kitchen counter. The scent of Dial soap in the bathroom, and Herbal Essence shampoo in the basement shower. A comforting mountain of laundry in the back room of the basement. Everyone moved over and made room for us when we pulled into the driveway of Aunt Becky's house in Ucon, Idaho. These became my safe people.

And they remain my safe people. 

So, when I visited them in my dream last night I felt deeply loved, and appreciated, and so comfortable that I could be completely myself and not have to prove a thing. The longer I live, the more deeply I love and appreciate my cousins. Not only the Miskin's from Ucon, but all my cousins, with whom I built relationships as an adult, because so many of them were adults before I was.

Thank you cousins. I love you forever.