They did it again...

The Rhode Island cousins.
They sent a box of Christmas presents again!

T lived with Gram, a school teacher first and Principal last.

He lived there while his mother was dying. He was 8.
A sad beginning, to be sure, though 8 year olds must go on living. And living with the cousins was filled with fun and trouble, joy and boredom, but even the boredom was fun.

As an only child, T was delighted... exploring, fooling around, finding old stuff like hand-smithed square headed nails and the running Model A truck with no body; they sat on a box to get around the property and boy oh boy, did they get around.

Lots of exciting "what if"s.

The big old ancient garbage pit was pretty darn cool.
The things you'd find in there!
The disgusting stuff was burned in the incinerator and wow how those flames and sparks flew into the sky. Looking back, the boys probably should not have thrown live ammo in.
Scared Uncle Tud half to death.

And they fooled with Aunt Thel's leftover antiques in the basement. She previously used the basement as an antique shop. The old powder horn was great! The boys filled it with black powder as the colonists did. Historical curiosity had them sprinkling a line of powder onto the cement floor and then of course they had to light it and too bad that the cousin forgot to put the horn away, because the explosion in his hand did no one any good. Man, were they in trouble for that one!

In the winter, the pond, the one with leeches, snapping turtles, water snakes and wooducks (who had migrated or hibernated), froze over.

If you could skate (Rhode Islanders can skate) out you went racing around. If you were a California cousin, you couldn't skate and so pushed a chair around until falling flat and breaking through the ice. Cold! The cool part was the way your clothes froze so quickly onto your body. Aunt Thel used concept this for drying her laundry...pin the clothes on the line in the afternoon and bring it the next morning...just damp enough to iron!

In the summer you fooled around at the mosquito-y pond; drove the bicycle in if necessary.

And then there was mowing. The property was big, but no ride on tractor mower for Uncle Tud, no way, he used a plain gas push mower. Since it rains year round (the summer can be miserably DAMP) the grass need to be mowed constantly. So there was mowing to be done every day. One day down by the pond, another day out by the garden, the next near the road, to be repeated again.

T lived with the cousins for about three years.
Then there was a remarriage for Da, and an argument between Gram and Da over T. The quiet father put his foot down. T moved back to California to a stepmother and baby half-siblings in the foggy summer, in a house on a steep hill, knowing no one.

Tough move for an almost 12 year old kid.

He didn't know his dad very well, didn't know his new mother at all and felt dejected for a long while. The Rhode Island cousins stayed in his heart for the interim years.

After our marriage we travelled across country so I could meet the cousins and T could have a reunion and try connect the dichotomy of his past and present life.

For a long time we wrote back and forth (before email, people!) and we called regularly and we visited several more times and they visited once each and we sent presents back and forth for Christmas...Gram even sending a generations-old from English-cousins baby chair. That chair arrived safely, but by the grace of God. Gram had wrapped in in a towel and stuffed it into a cardboard box and tied the whole thing up with string. Amazing! (before Fed-Ex, people!)

For the last couple of years, T and I haven't sent Christmas presents.

Someone has to stop this silly exchange.
We never see them.
We talk to them once a year when we Californians do the calling.
They only call when a relative dies.
We lost the last of the Great Generation, Aunt Thel, this year.

Truthfully, we don't know them any more.
We in California are addicted to feelings.
"We don't feel close to them. The relationship lacks intimacy."

Maybe we aren't close.
Maybe we don't really know each other.

But the Rhode Island cousins don't care.
They know what family does.
They send a card and a present at Christmas.

I'm off to FTD.
Gotta send flowers quick to get them to Rhode Island in time!

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