I was an "only" growing up, and we always moved around a lot, but I always appreciated having a lot of cousins. They were great substitute siblings for me. Close enough for fun, but without all the "mom, make her STOP looking at me" "MOM, make him/her stop touching me" crap.
Rosemarie was one of my few girl cousins. I have only two girl cousins on my mom's side, (the youngest girl, Katie, being 28 years younger than me!) Rosemarie was only 4 years older than me. Close enough to be a friend when I visited (and we also lived close by when I was 13 too.) We've always been able to easily pick up where we left off. I have 13 male cousins on that side. So it was "us two" against the bulk of them for the longest time!
Below is a picture of most of us "older" cousins on my grandmother's back porch. I was 4 and some, and Rosemarie was about 8. I'm at the far left in my saddle shoes and Rosemarie is right next to me. My youngest uncle, Joe, is the oldest here, holding the hand of Paul, Rosemarie's youngest brother. "The gang" [save my uncle John Shelak's kids, and Rosemarie's brother, Andy] was all there. Once, when I was not much older than I was here, we kids were all playing a game where we'd lay out a "treasure hunt" outside. You'd make a clue which would describe, somewhat cryptically, where the next clue was. And the person who found the last clue got to make up the next trail of clues. I "won" [figuring out the last clue was in a scarecrow) and because I couldn't write yet, Rosemarie helped me with the next set of clues. She was such a good cousin---not like her evil brother, Andy, who showed me how to play "Swab the deck."
(Hey, Rosemarie, you can click this bottom picture for a larger one you can save - I think my mom took this picture.)
4 comments:
Glad you had a great time with your cousin and her husband. Surprise visits are lovely, just so long as they are from someone we want to see :-)
ROTFL!!! Re: the "from someone you want to see."
It was fun to finally see them out here. For years R. had said "SOME DAY we will make it out there." We'll most likely get together on Sat. to do something fun too. She's just retired and they are on a 6 months: "See the USA" tour.
Love the old photo! It was nice when kids actually dressed like kids and girls didn't look like hoochi-mamas.
I don't even think I owned a pair of jeans until I was 14 or so for some reason or other. Shortly thereafter, kids LIVED in sneakers exclusively. But I'm somewhat amused when I look at old photos how when playing around we often wore our "second best" shoes. i.e. the ones we HAD worn to church or school, but weren't good enough for dress up -- but relegated to fooling around then. Then parents thought that sneakers all the time weren't good for building strong feet or whatever.
While I never had any shoe "things" of the Imelda Marcos variety, I have to say there was nothing more fun than having a pair of NEW leather shoes. I really loved that particular pair of saddle shoes, which were then all the rage.
Post a Comment