CHAPTER 3: NIECES AND NEPHEWS: WHEN TO START CALLING THEM COUSINS

CHAPTER 3: NIECES AND NEPHEWS: WHEN TO START CALLING THEM COUSINS


Discussions about the family get tricky as loving aunts and uncles want to talk about their precious nieces and nephews. But what do you do when quality time with the cherubs include activities which require the tot to have a drivers license?

Yesterday was successful. I blended with the 20 something’s and had no desire to sit outside with the 50 something parents. It was effortless. There was one tense moment when one of the twenty something’s said she worked at a college fair. Spontaneously I blurted out, “That’s great, I need college information for my nie – - cousin.” It was a close call. Why did my brother have to have children so young? He couldn’t be one of the baby boomers having their first child at 50.

Saying I needed information about colleges was not a total lie, and I am not comfortable completely lying. I do have a cousin who never finished college, and I could have gotten information for her. And I discovered recently that my father has a forty-year-old cousin. If she had children she could conceivably have one child beginning to consider what colleges to go to. And that child would be my second cousin.