Dual Citizenship

I have ten cousins and five siblings.
My mother is one of four; father is one of five.
So far this sounds like the beginning of an SAT word problem.
Ten cousins. That's it. My siblings and I double their cousin numbers.

I'm not close to cousins on either side. I didn't grow up near cousins; I saw them on holidays or random weekends or not at all. I have cousins I don't recall ever meeting; cousins I couldn't pick out of a line up, cousins I haven't seen in over five years. I don't know my extended family past a perfunctory point. And there are only ten of them.

But Facebook has done its best to bridge all distances.
My final sibling joined FB the other day. The five of us are now like Captain Planet & the Planeteers; I'm making my brother be Ma-Ti, the stupid kid with the power of heart. That kid was lammme.

With this fun coming togetherness crap the inevitable reunion banter begins. A cousin (one of the ones I don't quiiiite remember meeting) sent out an email to the rest of us, enthusiastically declaring we should have a big ol' family reunion because look at us, we are all on FB and it's high time we hung out. I don't think our parents have even attempted a family reunion since 1984. I saw my aunt for the first time in 20 years at my grandfather's funeral.

I understand the idea, I really do.
Family is family; blood is thicker than water, and on.
Sorry to be Debbie Downer here, but I don't know you. What we have in common is our parents are siblings; you know less than nothing about me and I can't say I know a thing about you. If you can't tell, I'm hyper negative about the idea of getting to know my cousins and I've been racking my brain as to the why. I usually thoroughly enjoy meeting people and making connections but to this I have a visceral heel-digging reaction. This is my theory as to the why.
When my parents divorced, my mother's family rallied around the flag of the country YourExIsABigFatBastard-ilvania while my father and his family choose the smaller country of NoGoodCrazyChristianBitch-instein. While two very worthy countries on their own, those who were born holding both those passports were unfortunately stuck like Tom Hanks in that equally unfortunate movie, “The Terminal.” But the viewers of that movie had to suffer for two hours; my siblings and I suffered...well...I think I still do. My aunts and uncles and grandparents fought bravely for their respective countries, and so family visits consisted mainly of listing to my family load cannons of hate and fire them, aiming them to destroy one who was half of my genetic material. I was eight years old. Didn't make me like my extended family much. I felt like I was evidence of a past mistake made by my parents; “look there's that reminder of that marriage implosion to the spouse we never thought was good enough for our kid/sibling. Maybe she'd like a popsicle.” With the exception of one fabulous uncle & aunt, not a single one of my parents’ siblings has ever tried to know a thing about me and that tastes a bit like bile. So, strange cousins, why now? What is so great about our genetic material that we should come together to see the ways in which it manifests itself? There were years and years when I needed family so badly and it wasn't anywhere to be found; why the hell should I give it audience now?
I'm happy with my siblings; our personalities and dramas and personal universes make five seem all the larger. Though the five of us have never lived together under one roof, we still manage to make weather systems whenever we gather. That is enough. I've seen their two passports; that's all the family I need.

This is not meant to knock any cousins. I'm reflecting on my reaction to the invite, not to the people themselves. I'm sure the ones I do not know are very nice.