Cousins

This post is a likely segue from yesterday's.  Although in yesterday's post, I posited that I wasn't sure if Marcel and I are related, after last night's little pizza party, I am convinced that we are.

My cousin Mary and I are first cousins, as her mother and my father were siblings.  Although I am the one who wears that little-known last name, Mary is as much a Mattil as I am.  Mary knows a story about our great-great-great-grandfather being fostered by a wealthy couple (royalty, perhaps?) in Alsace-Lorraine who for some reason, was sent off to America at the age of fourteen.  This was during the French Revolution, something I know nothing about, but Mary is a history teacher, so I will trust her on this.  We, of course, like to think that our ancestor was of royal blood, perhaps born out of wedlock and so hidden from the world?  Who knows?  But it's fun to think about.

Mary and two of her daughters (my first cousins, once removed?) came over tonight to meet my friend Marcel Mattil from Germany.  This was the first time here that I added two leaves to my parents' old maple dining room table in order to accommodate seven of us.  Now if that doesn't sound like family, I don't know what does.

We devoured three large pizzas and chatted away a few hours.  Although Marcel and Juliane speak excellent English, there are times when they don't recognize a word and ask about it.  At one point, Mary was telling a story in which there were deer, and neither Marcel nor Juliane knew what deer were.  Mary didn't miss a beat:  "You know, like Bambi?"

"Ah, yes!" exclaimed Marcel and Juliane at the same time.  Sometimes, you just need a little Disney to make life easier.

As a prelude to Thanksgiving, a friend on social media posted a handy-dandy chart to help relatives figure out their relationship status.  The directions to the chart are thus:  Figure out the common ancestor between two relatives. Then select the relationship of the first relative to the common ancestor in the top row. Move down to the row that corresponds to the relationship of the second person to the common ancestor. The result is the relationship of the second person to the first.

I've decided I don't need that chart to know that I am related to the people around my old extended table.  All I needed was the laughter, the stories, the shared food, and the warm feeling to know that we were all from the same place.  And that I love my cousins.