Mi familia

This weekend started off with a huge surprise from my extended family. Where I currently live, I have about 20 cousins. The sad part is that I rarely see them and I hate inviting myself over for tea. But a week ago I decided - hell, I'm going to ring a doorbell no matter what. I kindly let my cousin Tara know that I was coming over for a "tea-cap" and when I arrived I was greeted by her entire clan from 3 different cities/2 different provinces. It just worked out that everyone was visiting this weekend. While hanging out with your cousins may scare the bejeezus out of some folks, this side of my family rocks. There's a lot of history between us while I was growing up. Some of my best memories come from the homestead farm & family motel during the seasonal and summer holidays. I felt so blessed to be able to spend some time with them while we laughed our arses off around the kitchen table.

In this blog, I've chatted a few times about my "adoptive" Greek family. They are a great bunch of folks, have supported me throughout my life, and I'm always proud to be apart of their lives. This is not to suggest that my biological family isn't equally cool - they are awesomely cool. This weekend was just another example of their coolness. What is weird is that these cousins who I feel so close to aren't really so close to me on the family tree measuring stick. I don't have any immediate uncles/aunts. I barely have great uncle/aunts. These set of cousins come from my maternal grandparents side. Yes... for family I must go *that* far back.

My immediate family is very small - like 3 people small, one for each generation: me, my mom, and my granny. It wasn't planned this way. My grandmother did plan to have a large family, but fate would intervene and she contracted polio during the epidemic outbreak in the early 1950s (yeah, this was a factor of why I'm a microbiologist today). My mom was only 3 at the time and the resulting paralysis usurped any logical reason to have more children.


Fast forward things to my mom and her dreams of a nice nuclear family. But once again life circumstances would intervene - one night, her and I ended up on our own when I was 4 months and have been so ever since. I get a lot jokes about my tiny family plus the fact that I'm an only child, but I believe that my mom did her best and if anyone argues, I own several goalie sticks and know how to use them.

This brings things to me, I'm in my 30s and hear the biological clock ticking. I love kids and sincerely would like to have a couple. I have found a lot of people are shocked to hear/see that I'm a "baby-person". This has kinda irked me as it shows that many don't know who I really am. Maybe it's to do with being so "career-orientated" and my academic studies. While that has been a huge focus of my 20s, it doesn't mean that it's my only life focus. I think having kids are important - not just to continue the family line (well within my family, it is all on me), but having kids puts everything in a different perspective. I love the magicalness (yes, new word in the dictionary) of a child's world. Everything is a discovery, everything is an adventure. Those are two things you relearn with having kids. My mom has expressed a profound want of having grandkids. So far I've just pacified her with  a grandcat. I've joked that it would be *too* easy to give her one. She kindly replies, "Thanks, but I'll wait for a son-in-law first." So yes, kids are on my list, can't wait to meet them.


Off to errand land. Cowboy Junkies have been re-appearing on my playlist this week. "Sweet Jane" is one of my favourite mellow tracks. The repeating chords gets you mesmerized. Ciao!