All in the Family

Relatives are a relative thing

I’m in Panama for a week, visiting my cousin Sharna, who retired and moved here about seven years ago. My cousin Malori, who lives in Pittsburgh, is visiting, too. Sharna and Malori are my second cousins. That makes it seem like we are distant relations, but I saw them pretty often when I was a kid. I grew up in Cleveland, and Sharna and Malori lived in Los Angeles, but our extended family gathered frequently. I first met Sharna and Malori when my family traveled to Los Angeles when I was five years old. I was excited to meet cousins, but seeing the ocean for the first time in my life really marked the occasion.

I always had a tenuous grasp on how we were related. The language and codification of family trees—seconds and thirds, removed and so forth—never made a lot of sense to me, but nevertheless we carried on in a cousinly way, inviting one another to milestone occasions, availing ourselves of the guest rooms in the others’ homes once in a while, that sort of thing. Being cousins felt like being a human pantry item, and I mean that in a positive way—something that’s present, that gives you comfort because you know it’s there, that has a constancy that requires only occasional attention.

After she moved to Panama, Sharna began urging me to visit. She had horses; she had a pig; she grew bananas; she had a guest room. Bingo! Once Trump began rattling on about illegally reclaiming the Panama Canal, the timing seemed auspicious, since we may be at war with Panama in the near future; time to visit before there’s no time to visit. So off we went, along with my cousin Malori and her husband.

The first night we were at Sharna’s, someone—maybe my husband?—asked how we were related, and in a cold flash I realized that I couldn’t remember. I always assumed our connection was that my grandfather and their grandmother were brother and sister. But now Sharna was arguing that their grandmother didn’t have a brother. If that was the case, how were we related? Or—more to the point—were we related at all?

Outside, the sky had gone very black, and a moth ballet had commenced around the porch lights. Somewhere in the distance a wild beast howled; we could hear the horses shuffling in their stalls, their feed buckets clanking. I felt very far from home. If we weren’t related, then… I was in Boquete, Panama, with strangers. But they weren’t strangers! Anyway, isn’t being related just notional anyway? Maybe you have a nose in common, or a hair color, a few strands of similar DNA, but otherwise isn’t being related something you establish in theory and then act on?

Years ago, when I lived in Boston, I got a call from a man with a syrupy French accent. He had seen my byline in the paper, and he wanted to introduce himself: His name was Jacques Orlean and he was sure we were related. He had just moved to Boston from Paris and was delighted to meet a family member. I broke it to him gently. “My original family name was Orlinski, and we’re from Poland, so I’m afraid I’m not your relative.” I expected him to thank me and hang up, but he kept insisting that we had to be related, even after I repeated that I don’t have a test-tube’s worth of French blood. He finally hung up, but over the next few years, he called me every few months to say hello, and see how I was doing: He cousinified me. One day, he called to let me know he was moving back to Paris. “I will miss you,” he said, woefully, and for a moment, I realized I’d miss him, too. Farewell, Not-Cousin Jacques!

After a few anxious moments of Sharna, Malori, and me wondering whether the scaffolding of our cousinhood had just collapsed, I found some notes Malori’s mom had given me years ago laying out the thicket of family relations. Phew. Yes, our respective grandparents were siblings; my dad and their moms were first cousins; we were legitimate. Otherwise, wouldn’t this be the basis for a good Twilight Zone episode? Cousins morph into Strangers! Everything you assumed was true is not! And yet, really, would it have mattered? For years I’ve boasted that William Shatner is my cousin—I once heard it at a family gathering and figured I could make hay with the information. Of course, I’ve never met William Shatner, so this was the finest filament of connection—so fine as to be utterly meaningless except as something fun to brag about over drinks. In the midst of this Panamanian cousin reckoning, I got up the nerve to ask whether Sharna or Malori knew if this Shatner connection was real, or whether I had a lot of apologizing to do to everyone whose respect for me was predicated on that familial tie.

Good news: it’s true.

SHOW NOTES

—The Panama Canal is worth seeing!

—The photo at the beginning of the column is of Sharna’s pig, Porky. I’m having trouble adding captions to pictures here, apologies.

—I think the next book I’m going to read is SHANTARAM. I’ve heard great things about it. I’m almost done with the magnificent LOVED AND MISSED.

—Are you my cousin? Let me know.

—I’m going to schedule a live chat with paid subscribers in the next week or two, so if you haven’t ponied up for a paid subscription yet, please consider it.

Until next time,

XSusan