This week, a woman named Trudy – from Hudson, New York – messaged me to say that ancestry.com was indicating that I – but none of the rest of my family – might be related to her family. They wondered if I might have been adopted. She sent photos of some of her aunts because of a resemblance in our photos.  I told her that I definitely wasn’t adopted, and that unless the Sisters at Mercy Hospital mixed up the babies that day, I definitely went home with the right parents.  Trudy was disappointed because she hoped her family had made a connection with a new-found cousin.  And that’s what got me thinking about what an under-appreciated gift cousins can be.

When I was a little wet-nosed kid, I think I always appreciated that I had cousins. There’s something kinda neat about cousins. They don’t make any demands or expectations of you like your siblings can, and a shared grin or a giggle can remind you of your strange kind of mystical connection. And, a cousin is somebody who knows all about you – warts and all – but probably likes you anyway.

On my Norwegian side, my cousins were Arlin, Edmund, Mavis, Nelda, and Minard Longfield.  We played a lot in with them in Atkins, Iowa where they lived. Here’s some photos…

My Irish/Bohemian cousins were all from or near Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where my family lived. My cousins were Peter Bailey; Sonny and Mike Merrifield; Jimmy, Beverly, and Patty Rawson; Eddie Joe and Danny Gorman. They were all younger than me but I still liked it when we got to see them.

As the years went on, most of us moved away from Iowa, and we eventually lost most of our contact with one another. To this day, though, they each left their own memory mark on me. All but one of my cousins are gone now, but – just as with my siblings, also gone – we’re still joined forever, laced together by our DNA.

If you have some cousins who are close to your heart, you won the lottery. It may not always work that way, though. You may not be so lucky in the cousins you got stuck with ‘cause you don’t get to choose. The apostle St. Barnabas said “Blood is thicker than water. It is what joins us, binds us, curses us.” (We can only hope he wasn’t bad-mouthing his cousin Saint Luke the Evangelist. We’d like to think that they were good chums, even though  Luke couldn’t prevent Barnabas from getting stoned to death.  Dang!)

Today – January 9th –  is the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus  by his cousin John the Baptist. Jesus was 30 years old at the time, and John was only 6 months older. Jesus couldn’t have won a more heroic, faithful ally than his cousin. When Mary went to her cousin Elizabeth to tell her about the imminent birth of Jesus, Elizabeth – herself 6 months pregnant with John – said “The babe inside me leaped for joy!” 

From all accounts, John never lost that joy in his “cousin-hood” with Jesus. I hope Jesus and John had a chance to enjoy good cousin time together, especially on the baptismal day.  Neither of them were to live on earth much longer than that day.

To sign off on today’s blob, I was trying to think of some song that could could relate to that day’s very special baptism. And I hit the jackpot. This week, son Matthew had Alexa playing some spiritual music, and we both were transfixed by a beautiful hymn that neither of us had ever heard before at church or anywhere else. We were trying to figure out the name of it.  

Grandson Bryce heard us and came in. “Oh, that’s called ‘Holy, Holy'”, he announced. “It’s by a guy named Michael W. Smith.” He then proceeded to sing it to us. We were floored. Not just because he knew about it, or that we had never heard him sing anything before, or that he has a really good singing voice, or that he knew the composer’s name. (He even got the middle initial right!)  It was because in spite of his usual eclectic music tastes, this simple hymn now seems to be a part of who Bryce is. 

Apparently, the Presbyterian church that Bryce attended in his growing-up years, had the good sense to include the hymn in its staple repertoire. And it must have made a lasting impression on him.  As it did on Matthew and me.

The song only contains 23 words, but it seems like they could have been written about his cousin by John the Baptist himself. If you don’t know it, the next time you’re having a hard day, please sit down and listen to it.  It’s called “Holy, Holy”, or sometimes “Agnus Dei”. Expect to be comforted!
https://youtu.be/KVFzxazTQNM

Finally, I can’t resist closing this without showing off a photo of a certain batch of cousins of my own intimate acquaintance.

“Cousins help pass down our traditions, values, heritage and valuable stories that might have been lost. Cousins are important because they share blood, no matter if they are first, or distant, cousins. Going forward, they are legacies of ancestors who set the course for the future and remind us of our perseverance, will, strength and courage.” (Anahid Arakelian)–