Family Endures

I was talking to my cousin, Helene, on the phone this morning. We talked about a book she is writing about our family. Helene and I are first cousins. Our mothers were sisters. They came to this country from Russia after WWI. Helene is writing the story of our family in Russia and then in America up to the point when all the cousins of our generation were born. I am the youngest cousin of my generation.

Helene said to me, "In essence I am looking for people who no longer exist and I am finding them." She is giving new life to our mothers and aunts and uncles, to our granparents and great grandparents. They will no longer be two dimensional pictures in an old album. She is infusing them with personalities, with hopes and dreams.

"Does family remember family?" she asked me. "There is something that pulls families apart and brings them back together. Something in the DNA that makes us recognize each other."

I agreed with her and, to illustrate her point, will relate a story from my own recent experience, but on the paternal side of my family. I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, went to college in Boston, then moved to California. In essence I moved away from my family of origin to find my own way in the world. While I kept in contact with my mother's side of the family, I lost touch with the uncles, aunts and cousins on my father's side.

In the last few years I started to reconnect with some of my first cousins on my father's side of the family, when I came to Pittsburgh to visit with my step mother who lives in a nursing home there. Email helps keep us in touch with each other's lives now and erases time and distance.

A few months ago I got an email from my cousin, Marcia, who got my email address from her brother, Phil. Her father and my father were brothers, which makes us first cousins. We had not seen or heard from each other since we were in high school - over 40 years ago!!! We have each been married, had children, grandchildren, but never did our paths actually cross. Marcia told me via email that she was planning a trip from her home in Chicago to an island in Alaska where grizzly bears lived. She wanted to know whether she could stop by our house on the way to visit for a few days. We live in Washington state.

I said of course - come on over! And then I put the dates of her visit on my calendar. I didn't give it much thought until a week before she was to arrive, when she emailed me again to give me her flight arrival time and cell phone number. "Wow, she's really coming," I said to my husband, Jer. "I really do not know her at all. What if we don't get along?"

My husband and I discussed her upcoming visit. I realized I really wasn't worried about her coming. "If she wants to come and see you, it is meant to be," Jer said. "Trust to Intent (the cause behind all actions) that you and Marcia will connect in a meaningful way."

I agreed. Rather than feeling apprehensive, I was actualy looking forward to her visit. When the day arrived I picked her up from the airport shuttle with my grandchildren in tow. She was short with curly hair like me and completely without makeup of any kind - also like me. We went to a park so she could stretch her legs and the kids could play. As we walked along a path together, we were both feeling the pieces of our separate lives - so long apart - coming back together.

Marcia is a healer, trained in Healing Touch Therapy. She also studies with a Cherokee Shaman. While my path has been to study with east Indian holy men and women, the lessons we have been learning were basically the same. We were both actively pursuing a path of devotion and learning on the way to (hopefully!) enlightenment.

Marcia helped me to heal a nagging chronic injury to my feet. She held my grandson's energy while he underwent surgery to repair decay to his teeth, she taught my granddaughter how to make princesses out of Hollyhock flowers, she bought me the book "Animal Speaks", she went running with my husband, Jer. When she left three days later I could not imagine a time when we were not connected, when our lives were far apart.

I never met Marcia's husband - a Rabbi who died six years ago. I have never met her three children, her six grandchildren. She never met any of my children or grandchildren until she came for this three-day visit. It didn't matter. The family that we are both a part of pulled us back together, helped us reconnect.

We realized how similar our childhoods had been. Both of our mothers died when we were very young and both of our fathers died when we were teens. Marcia is six years older than I am, and she often spent the summers at our house with my older sister before I was born and when I was a baby. She had loving memories of my mother, the mother I lost when I was three.

The visit was a blessing to us both in so many ways. We regained a part of our past and enriched our present. If we never see each other again, we will be forever changed by this three-day slice of time spent together. On the shuttle back to SeaTac Airport, Marcia wrote to me: "I am feeling and thinking of our time together, which seems like it always was. I want to thank you...for the gift of who you are that allowed for the seamless relationship we had and have."

It is never too late to reconnect, to touch the life of someone we once knew and loved. Family can nurture us in all phases of our lives: as babies, children, young adults, crones. There are reasons we were born to our own particular families. We have lessons to learn, gifts to give and receive. I am fortunate to have such wonderful cousins on both sides of my family. Family endures, love endures, hope endures. And so it is.