So you can imagine what my neck hairs did when my Dad called me from Massachusetts one day not long after I bought my California desert condo. “Honey,” he began, “we have Cousins who live near you in the desert. Why don’t you give them a call?”
I stalled. Several weeks went by, and since I was busy working, and my next trip to the condo for a long weekend of vacation was not for awhile, I really didn’t think about his comment again. However, he evidently thought about it, because when I called to tell him I was so ready for a long weekend and I finally driving down and spend a few quiet days… here it came again. “Honey, we have Cousins who live near you in the desert. Don’t forget to give them a call. ” Before I could plead for a stay of execution and render my excuse that I only had a few days, he followed with “Here’s their telephone number.” I admit in retrospect that I did not make the call on that long weekend. But I did make the call on my next trip. Guilt was upon me, but I have since conceded that guilt is sometimes a wonderful thing.
Sitting at a desk in my company’s desert branch location late on a Friday afternoon, I picked up the phone. With the note in front of me containing a scrawled number and the word “COUSINS,” I mused upon the fact that I was feeling the same resentment now that I had felt when I wrote the number my Dad had given me. I began to bolster myself. This was just a call. I made calls for a living, and communicating was my life. Since I had not yet spent much time trying to conjure up who these Cousins were, I spent a few moments gathering all that I recalled about the family branch onto which I was about to climb. Happily, as I mentally drew the tree and placed this couple upon it, I realized that my cousin’s Christine’s mother, now deceased, had been one of the nicest people in our extended family. Like my own deceased mother, she had climbed over from a tree of a different ethnicity onto the Lebanese family tree. Also, as I did some quick math, her death and my own mother’s had left Christine and myself “only daughters” without our mothers at a relatively young age. So I certainly had something in common with this Cousin I was about to call.
Using that preface to commit to an open-hearted, positive mindset, I made the call. Expecting to hear my female Cousin’s voice (whose face I could not remember but whose characteristics I imagined to be those of her mother), I was surprised to hear a man’s voice. It was Jay, not Christine, who had answered. He was working from home, and explained his post-surgical immobility after tearing his Achilles tendon. Ten minutes or so into an animated, energetic conversation during which I introduced myself and admitted my initial reluctance (and its reasoning) to make this call, I found that this young man was absolutely delightful. I couldn’t wait to talk to Christine!
We arranged to meet for dinner that very evening. We chose a popular Italian restaurant, and since Jay and Christine shared Italian heritage, and were permanent desert dwellers, their ordering expertise was invaluable. I enjoyed the best desert meal experience I had had. Afterward, we promised to meet again, and I went home and thought about our conversation.
How wrong I had been! These were Cousins in the best possible sense. I felt related to them in my heart, and I lay in bed mulling over the commonalities in our life experiences. They played golf. They loved the desert and had happily left behind the long winters of New England. They had wonderful stories which occurred with people and places familiar to me, about their New England roots. Family and friends were all-important to them. They were animal lovers. They were movie buffs. They were kind and compassionate, articulate conversationalists and considerate listeners. And they loved to laugh.
That was over five years ago. As I sit in my totally-remodeled desert condo today, I look around at the ideas and concepts that make desert living here so relaxed and functional, and I credit my cousin Christine. She was the manager of the rehab project, which took place entirely in my absence. When I leave in the Spring I know that Chris and Jay will take care of the condo. When I return each Fall the place is magically clean, the refrigerator is inexplicably stocked, and the air is unmistakably freshened.
Life takes some unexpected turns, doesn’t it? Sometimes we take those turns slowly and carefully, and are able to savor and sightsee along the way. Other times we are speeding so fast that, after nearly missing them, we careen around and can barely take our eyes off the road for long enough to enjoy the serendipitous pleasure of an accidental wonder. But are there really any accidents? Is it serendipitous at all? Or is there an invisible Hand that pushes a visible hand to turn the wheel?
Cousins and I see each other often, enjoying meals, hiking, movies, and family updates. They have been to my Northern California home to visit as they escape the desert’s Summer temperatures, and have met my family there. They are a part of my gatherings of friends who come to the desert to visit. Everyone who meets them loves them. We are, in every sense, family AND friends. But we still remember our first meeting as “Cousins,” and as such we have a private joke between us. Each time I begin a conversation with Chris or Jay with our signature greeting of “COUSIN!” I add a silent “thank you, Dad.” And in their frequent and always-welcome notes to me that keep us connected when we are apart, Cousins will often add “We’re so glad you made that call!” Our relationship is memorialized in a picture frame of memories that sits in my condo living room and bears the perfect inscription: “Cousins by Chance, Friends by Choice.”
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