a place at the little table

Two back-to-back turkey dinners with both my family and Michael's has reminded me again of the special relationship of cousins. To a stranger they couldn't look like a more impossible group of friends, cast together by an indiscriminate net. However unalike, they mix in defiance of the rules of the playground. With their parents yards away [laughably] attempting to bicker with each other under the radar, the cousins are treated to a sense of invisibility rare to be found in any other social setting. Free to tackle and wrestle one another, to slink off unquestioned to remote corners, and to spill their family's secrets to one another. Unchecked giddiness; the sweetest childhood plum. Sequestered from the grown-up table, they egg each other on to display the very best of their worst table manners. And as the conversation among adults becomes more adult or less so, anything each young cousin might have ever seen or heard can be poised for debate unnoticed. At our 'first in a very long time' family reunion this summer I re-met many of my cousins and their [in many cases, adult] offspring. It was exhilarating to collect a new generation of cousins, outnumbering the batch I had at my Grandmothers funeral twenty-seven years ago many times over. And by the end of the day my kids were up relatives by about seventy. Kurt Vonnegut wrote a novel called "Slapstick" which prophesied a nation with a decimated infrastructure, a far-flung caste society, and few if any resources for recreating the benevolent society it had once aspired to. Winning on a "Lonesome No More" platform, the new President installed a system of artificial extended family by issuing everyone a new middle name ( Chipmunk, Uranium, Daffodil, etc.). This entitled the bearer to one hundred and ninety thousand cousins across the country. Like many of Mr. Vonnegut's wistful notions, this one is explored to points most ludicrous. But few would label his work 'science-fiction'. We seem to be working closer to this age, not away from it. We revel in this familial blending, searching for those who would make us blow milk out of our noses, sometimes unsuccessfully in religious and political affiliations where similarities are celebrated higher than differences. At work I have taken to calling my [union] co-workers this way; Cousin Randy, Uncle Carmen. Freelancers all, we meet up every two, five, ten years from the last time, each time assembling a few more people we will bear our true natures to. And again we are respected and appreciated for the experience each of us bring to the [little] table. It reminds us of how it is still possible to feel broad and connected, to live outside the playground categories of age, sex, and...whatever- reminded that our connections are all the richer for placing the least importance on how we might read on paper, and the most on the uncensored comradery and commiseration we can share. These might be the sweetest plums of adulthood. Can't we all just be cousins?