What strength your mother must have had!

My family was the same way. My father was one of ten and his father was one of 12. 9 boys and huge funerals where I met most of them. My mother was one of 4 but only one other survived until I met her. One brother died of rheumatic heart disease and another died as a small child from what sounds like pyloric stenosis. The cure for the latter was found 10 years after his death.

My mother was born in 1898 and lived in three centuries, dying in 2001. Her father died of pneumonia in 1899 when she was an infant. She had a tracheostomy on her mother’s kitchen table at age 2 for Diphtheria so I know about disease in those days. Both her mother and her brother died in 1926 so she moved to Los Angeles, living with cousins until 1929 ruined them financially. She moved back to Chicago and lived with her sister and her husband. She had great stories about the 1920s and California. She and my father had a long courtship because it was the Depression, so I was born when she was 40 and my sister was born when she was 43. All my great grandmother’s children lived until adulthood as farm life was far healthier than city life.

I am still as close to most of my cousins as distance allows. After I moved to California, I visited my mother in Chicago frequently. My father and I were estranged in his last years.

I’m distantly related to my wife, too (we have a common ancestor about six generations back). It’s more common than you think, especially in or near New England, where there was a very small pool of early colonists. Once you trace lineage to one of them, you’re “related” to the rest of them some way or another.

We know. The military bases and their families are being probed.

I was generally closer to my mother’s family rather than my father’s, as most of them lived in NYC or Chicago for my youth — only one lived where I lived, an Aunt and her husband, with a daughter and a son… the son was almost my age, so we did grow up together, but we were pretty different… so we got along a fair amount, but only in variable spurts. He was much more of a “wild child” in his teens, but settled down a lot when he became an adult, and generally has done ok for himself. I haven’t seen him in about 15y, as he’s been kind of distant and I’m not going to reach out continually to someone who won’t reach out to me. He married a 2nd Gen Cuban, and they had 3 girls.

I know of my other cousins on my father’s side, but only distantly — haven’t seen them anywhere but FB for at least 30y. All the uncles, including my own father, died fairly young (cigarettes, mostly), but the aunts all lived to a fairly ripe old age, though they’ve all passed.

Back on the mother’s side, three had one kid each, and the youngest had one daughter by her first husband and one by her second. The oldest had a son like my mother, but they were always the wasted time of the family, constantly on the family grift, always thinking the world owed them something, so, haven’t really given a crap about either of them (the aunt passed away about 15y ago). The uncle and his wife are still alive and they have a daughter whom I see occasionally. The youngest, with the two daughters, I’m fairly close to the first one (still see occasionally) but the other I haven’t seen in like 15y either. She’s ok, we just have nothing whatsoever in common, really. The older of those two had two boys, the younger I think has four kids (like I said, not close 😛 )

A quick gauge of actual proximity for the three maternal-side female cousins tends to be intellectual nature and intelligence. The two I regularly interact with are both more like me in that regard, the other is more “earthy” (not to suggest any issue with that, it just means we don’t really have much to talk about).

I suspect that’s kind of that way with the paternal cousins, too — I never got along with the sister of the one my age, she’s, well, “not that bright” would be the best description. Her brother, well, he’s smart enough but still not really as intellectual as I am. We’d almost certainly still interact more, but I’m not going to do all the work of keeping the relationship alive.

The other family that is up north, I don’t interact with much but I’d say they’re like the other “not close” female maternal cousin, “earthy”… and again, not looking down, just not a lot to talk that much about or to share with them.

Wow!