So this week I’m up north with my cousins and aunt.
My aunt is my dad’s sister, and she married a Swede, my uncle Eric. They lived in Germany when I was small, and then the West Coast, so I didn’t know them and their kids, my cousins, that well. But my mother’s sisters didn’t have any kids, so I had very few cousins, and these cousins were the exotic ones from far away.
Some of these cousins moved east, and we knew each other when I was in high school. but my aunt and uncle remained on the west coast. Others moved all over.
After my mom died, I lost track of many of my cousins. Recently, though, after my uncle died, my aunt came east to live with my cousin Linda and her husband. Then my dad became frailer, and my aunt and my sister and I worked to move him up north to live near his sister. Dad lived there for a few years, then he went into the nursing home. During this time I saw my aunt and cousin and cousin-in-law and got to know them again, but their kids were grown and gone, and I didn’t know them.
And my aunt’s other children, my other cousins, I barely know who they were. Their kids were unknown. I met some of them briefly when I was out west in '94, but never since then.
So last spring, my dad died. After this, I’ve been reconnecting with people. I got in contact with my aunt on my mother’s side, my cousin on that side, and learned of more distant relatives of my mother’s father out on the Prairies.
And this week, I came up to my cousin Linda’s place for Christmas, for the first time. I looked at all sorts of family pictures. My cousins are now grandparents, and their kids’ kids are ridiculously cute. 
Actually, the whole family is pretty good looking. My cousin Becky has 7 kids! (Some fostered.)
And today I talked to my cousin Ingrid out west for the first time in over twenty years. On Skype, so I could see her as well!