Barbara J. Hamby

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Early Easter Weekend

Reading is becoming more comfortable for me now so I’m back to my old habit of digesting two or three books at a time. One I’m presently reading is written by a friend and is not a genre I usually read, but is well written and based in Oregon and Washington. It’s light reading—a Christian romance novel. The other is a history of the Kennedy Clan and the “curse” that has dogged them for years. Quite a contrast.

Tomorrow we will spend the afternoon with part of Floyd’s large family and enjoy dinner with them. Next weekend my kids and their spouses will have Sunday dinner with us here. It’s looking like tomorrow will be a rainy Easter, but maybe we’ll get some more sun by the following weekend. I remember an early Easter in Seattle years ago when my new frilly hat got snowed on.

I learned of the death of a cousin today—one I hadn’t seen for many years, probably since we were children. Back in the early 1940’s, he and his family lived on the same property as our family did in a suburb of Seattle. With the housing shortage, our two families and our grandparents lived in small separate quarters in a Seattle suburb, on wooded property with a creek below. We played together and were sometimes joined by two more cousins from another family who lived in Seattle.

Growing up, I had more cousins than I could count and I’m not sure I ever met all of them. Their numbers are dwindling now, however, even though I am among the eldest. I believe only one, who passed away years ago, was older than I, by just a few years. As families have become smaller, my children and my siblings’ children have far fewer cousins than we did. They probably don’t see each other any more than we did, but some communicate by email. Computers have changed family dynamics dramatically.

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