This weekend I saw some cousins I haven’t seen for…well, we couldn’t figure it out. Did we last see each other at my cousin James’s wedding? That was when Henry was 2 weeks old (I’d considered giving Henry the middle name James in honor of the cousin/wedding; I am glad I didn’t, but also I still think that was a fun idea and that I wouldn’t have regretted it) (the real names would not have been Henry James like the author, so that was not an issue), and Henry is now 18 years old. Maybe it was at my cousin Lynnie’s wedding two years later—but no, I didn’t go to Lynnie’s wedding. Oh!! Maybe it was at my brother’s wedding?? Oops, no, that was even longer ago.
Our conclusion was that if we can’t remember how many DECADES it has been, that means too much time has gone by. And we had such a nice time together! My brother said afterward that he hadn’t realized the gathering would be so determined to laugh and have a good time, and that’s just how it was. It’s not as if we thought everyone would be determined to be pensive and serious! But this was just so clearly a group that WANTED to enjoy the time together, WANTED to say things to make everyone else laugh, WANTED to be glad to be together.
Well. Now this presents a new conundrum, and it is: How do we arrange more frequent get-togethers in the future? Maybe something every year or two; every two to three years might be more achievable. I think the big gap happened because we hadn’t noticed we’d shifted from the “Our parents get us together” stage of life to the “We have to do that ourselves” stage of life. It was a little exhilarating to think of, and a little weighty.
We have a rather large age gap: my mom and her siblings are spread out over twelve years, which is half a generation; my cousins and I are born over fourteen years, and I am the eldest. When my youngest cousins were born (two of them the year I was twelve and one more when I was fourteen), I was about the age my youngest uncle was when I was born. I love this kind of generational shifting (I love when someone becomes an aunt/uncle while still in school, or when an aunt/uncle is YOUNGER than their niece/nephew), but I do think it makes it near-impossible to do the important childhood bonding. I am much closer to some of my SECOND cousins on that side of the family, because they are almost exactly the same age as my brother and me, and they were often at family events; and in the era when grandparents felt no obligation to have any entertainments on hand for children, we bonded immediately. Meanwhile my little cousins were toddlers, under the radar. When I headed for college, they headed for preschool/kindergarten. No wonder we didn’t think to keep in touch.
Now, however, they seem to be full adults, and very nice/fun people besides. Our parents are mostly at the point where they may no longer attend family reunions, let alone arrange them. We cousins are spread out not only in age but also over about 800 miles: not insurmountable, but not the kind of thing where you can stop by with a pie. I would say two of the seven of us are placid to the point of irrelevance in this matter: they might attend a reunion, but they won’t do anything to make anything happen. Another two of the seven of us (plus one of the placid ones) have young children: it’s harder for them to travel, and harder for them to be in an unfamiliar place, and harder for them to find the time/energy to arrange things. Another two of the seven of us are my brother and me: we have older children, we’re more flexible—and also, we’re the eldest; I feel like this gives us a certain level of responsibility to see if we can make this happen / see if we all want it to happen. The last of the seven is another contender for leadership: confident, comfortable, social, and ready to make things happen; she’s also one of the babies born when I was twelve, which is fun. Oldest and youngest cousins—UNITE AND PLAN!
…Er. If you have any ideas, the cousin committee would be grateful to hear them. How do people MAKE THESE THINGS HAPPEN? (And WHAT SORTS OF THINGS do they make happen?) I feel like we could get bogged down even trying to find times we’re all available.
Oh fun! I always am really delighted when I realize that I really like my relatives or my friend’s significant others. Seems kind of silly but….it is nice knowing that you really LIKE someone.
I have been having thoughts on this kind of thing recently too. My Dad’s aunts and uncles always had a family reunion that had been going on since the 60’s. It was/is always on Father’s Day (to the point that we never referred to it as a reunion and always just as “Father’s Day) and my dad’s aunt and uncle hosted for many years—probably until I was in high school. When they were too old to host the my parents’ generation started hosting. And now that generation is older than the original people were when they stopped hosting. And no one in my generation seems to be stepping up. Which is a bummer….this year is the first year (other than COVID) that no one had it.
I still have cousins getting married, so I still see them fairly frequently at weddings. And—this is morbid—I’m starting to see them at funerals. But I like that I know a lot of relatives on that side. On my mom’s side, they never had reunions and I don’t know ANY of her cousins. My sister got married last year and the picture of my Dad’s side had about 50 people in it (and some couldn’t make it) and my mom’s side had 15.
I don’t have a lot of great ideas for getting something started, but the fact that you have people willing to try and organize is a huge thing. I’d suggest really aiming to have something regularly (either once a year or once every couple of years) and maybe the same weekend each time. It always seemed easy to know that every Father’s Day were were doing our gathering and even if we couldn’t make it, we knew it would be going on the next year. Don’t give up if not everyone can attend. I’m not sure if you just want this to be a cousins thing (which would be fun) but don’t be afraid to invite the parents and the kids.
We have a WhatsApp group – that is nice for staying in touch anyway. We try to meet once a year, the people with the mental and physical capacity to host such a gathering take turns, but that is an unspoken thing (say, if one year it was my sister and the year after that it was me, then a cousin will take the initiative the following year without there being an official order/expectation). We have learned that it works best for us to have someone’s house/flat as a base, to have either brunch or coffee and cake there and just hang around and chat, but to also have one low-stakes activity (“Boßeln”, a German boule-type game to make a walk in the park really fun, or a boat trip, or visiting a castle/monastery/farm, or playing Kubb a.k.a.Viking Chess – adapt for your region/culture/family accordingly) that will be enjoyed by kids and adults alike.
The people who travel from further away will stay for one or two nights and have time together in smaller subsets outside of the day of gathering everyone.
A phenomenal low stakes activity is bowling!!’ We’ve just rediscovered it and I can’t recommend it enough.
I am fortunate to have some good, old-fashioned bowling alley near me that have somehow survived—- those are my favorite place to bowl. However, I’ve found new ones have been popping up lately.
I hadn’t bowled in years and have never been an avid bowler. But I had some family in from another country who really wanted to experience true American things so bowling was one of our activities. It was such a blast; I chose to do a bowling party for my college-age daughter’s birthday and are already trying to decide when we can go again.
I LOVE bowling, also mini golf! Trying different courses can be super fun.
I love that you have such an amazing vibe with your cousins. I was fortunate to have that on both sides of my family. And just like you, we’ve lost touch as a result of grandparent/parent loss/geography and the need to focus on the day to day of life.
Another low stakes activity line bowling is family game nights are another great idea. It could be partially old school board games and playing cards and partially digital. These days most kids have some sort of device and they often know how to connect through them better than us old-timers do.
As for how to make sure you stay in touch, I would set up something up sooner rather than later and make it more frequent. I also wouldn’t stress out about making sure every single person comes every single time. However, I would be aware of not purposefully excluding anyone.
If you really want another ‘formal’ gathering, I would set something up for January around Martin Luther King, Jr. Make sure everyone is invited and included. In the meantime I would foster a more regular contact with those who respond in some way to the January invitation.
I’ve found by fostering a few key cousins, they will then bring in another few key cousins until they all get included (or not— depending on their preference and availability ). I also find it is fun to get one-on-one time with cousins to really share your particular perspective on memories without getting bogged down in arguments over the family’s historical record.
Just yesterday, I met up with a cousin at an amusement park that was fairly accessible to both of us and it was a blast. My kids had not seen his daughter for years and we got to experience her first roller coaster with her.
For my daughter’s recent bowling partly, another cousin was able to be there and she was able to connect to an aunt who she hadn’t seen in years.
As we move further into this digital age, activating a healthy community is crucial.
I have a similar situation: my dad came from a very large blended family (10 siblings altogether) and the age range is almost 20 years, so the cousin age range is even larger. So I have a ton of cousins and I think the oldest is almost 20 years older than me, and I have some cousins who are 17 years younger than me. In other words, I did not know either of them really growing up. I am in the middle, and so I did know all the other cousins of similar age.
My family puts on a reunion every few years. Most of them are in Saskatchewan, so that’s usually where it is. It’s FAR for me, like at least a two to three day drive. I went last year, and it was fun, but of course not all the cousins were there.
On the less-close side of the family, we’re still at the weddings stage, so for the next couple of years, that’s how we’ll see each other. Before that, we didn’t do any group gatherings, so I made a point of making sure to reach out to cousins (and aunts/uncles) when I was in their cities – I traveled a lot for work before the pandemic so that worked great, I saw almost everyone every 1-4 years. (Did not see the middle-of-nowhere cousin or the never-responds-to-texts cousin.)
On our closer side, my parents have a house on a lake – so a text goes around every summer “are we doing memorial day or July 4 this year?” and that’s all it takes.
This sounds SO fun, Swistle. I have a lot of cousins, but we’re all over the country and some of them legit HATE me, so we have never once gotten together. It kind of stinks, considering three of us have children all born in the exact same year. But you know, I never considered that it might be up to me, as the second-eldest cousin, to try to rally us together. Hmm. Something to consider.
Things may be simpler for my kiddo, considering she has only the one cousin on either side of the family. Hopefully they stay close as they age.
Hmmm. My husband is the oldest of 6 siblings, with a 17-year age spread and we’re a May-November couple so he actually has the youngest kid of all the siblings many, many kids (ours has just started college, some of the others are my age, and at least one of his siblings is a great grandparent; his family tends to start having kids young).
They’ve organized both sibling get-togethers and let’s-get-everyone-together-get-togethers. The former have involved traveling to a single place (one sibling has made “more money than God” in family lore and owns a home big enough to host us all and did that once, the most recent get-together we rented a HUGE AirBnb), and for the latter we tend to go to e.g. a state park that has cabins and camping options and people make their own arrangements/decisions about where to stay. Picking the weekend can be tricky, though many in the sibling group are retired or have flexible work, we do generally aim for a summer or holiday weekend — Labor Day or Memorial Day. My husband is not an organizer for this sort of thing, but there are a couple in the group, and he is a participator.
On my side of the family there are 8 first cousins spread across 4 countries at the moment (3 in the US, 3 in the UK, 1 in continental Europe, 1 in Asia), with kids of our own ranging from high school to early adulthood. We’ve done summer get-togethers that have not included all but have brought a bunch of us together including our parents’ generation and our kids. These have mostly been weeklong (or longer) trips typically to someone’s home base with others finding AirBnbs or whatever — we did have one get-together where one of us (me) was traveling past a bunch of the others (layover in Heathrow with a short break to visit UK family), another US cousin was also passing by (literal layover in Heathrow but with a long wait between flights), and those present/in the area all got together for lunch. Often these, at least for us, pretty much involves committing your summer trip — or your big summer trip — to being that trip.
But IMO it’s worth it though I suspect not all would agree (some haven’t participated at all ever, others participate only if nearby).
Glad you had such fun reconnecting with your cousins!
I am the oldest of 7 cousins on one side, and an only child. My youngest cousin is 20!!!! Years younger than me. We used to do holidays together when my grandparents were alive, but that has mostly stopped. Ever since my 18 year old was born, we have had a bbq for his birthday with family and friends. Not all cousins have made it, but it has been a nice way to keep in touch other than the rare wedding/shower.
Several people have mentioned picking an annual date and that is what has worked for one side of our family. Every January 1st, a church is rented that has a big kitchen and gym space and then the extended family (~75 people?) gather for board games, volleyball and floor hockey, visiting, and a big potluck supper. Minimal organization for any one person and no person has to accommodate it in their home (also affordable!). It helps that the distances people have to travel aren’t huge – a 3 hour drive is about the furthest that anyone has to come (a few families live further away and are connected in other ways but don’t make the trip in January – there are other smaller family gatherings throughout the year).
I think there is tremendous value in creating opportunity to keep the generations connected. I hope your cousin committee can make it happen! The key might be to just *start* with something – knowing there is no date/place/activity that will work for everyone – and then let it evolve.
Not cousins, but I have a very geographically spread out friend group. Some single, some have kids, etc. so us getting together for fun has been challenging. What we (the bossy ones) have done, is put some ideas for trips out there with time frames (summer, etc.). We whittle the list of options down, and then about 4-6 months out, announce “this is where/when we’re doing something”. This has worked out well, one trip we all were able to go, another a few of us went. The only true caveat is one you say yes you have to come, as our trips involve hotels and the # of people affect the costs. We’ve already started discussing next summer adventure.
I have family like this. My mother was the oldest of 9 girl cousins and my sister is only 1 year younger than the youngest of those 9. So I grew up with my mother’s cousins. NOW, as adults, the next generation is closing the age gap. It is quite wonderful!
My mom is part of a big cousin group that has an annual bbq. They make it the last Saturday in July so people can plan for it. The group of cousins reunited after their parents died because the parents didn’t get along. My mom is the baby of the group. She was a teenager when the rift occurred and 40 something when they reunited. She and another cousin both had a boy and girl and named them the exact same names! That was fun to discover at the first reunion. I ran into my name twin at my first job because she was the wife of my boss. I had no idea about any of this but somehow she figured out we were related!
How to make this kind of thing happen? It’s REALLY HARD. I have a really good friend who lives four streets away and we literally see each other once every year for a lunch and wander around the market date – I think this is both very good and kind of pathetic.
My kids have cousins in their age range on my side and a huge spread on my husband’s side, in that his brothers are younger and had kids a bit later in life, and that his mom’s youngest brother married late and had a kid who is my husband’s cousin but slotted more into the ‘my kids’ cousin’ age range. I also love this.
We have to try harder to see one of my husband’s aunts and one of his uncles now that the grandparents and my MIL are not around, because it used to happen with someone else organizing it. I don’t know how you make it happen, but I agree that it would be wonderful if you (you plural and you singular) could.
I love this discussion! I’m one of the oldest cousins on both sides of my family–the oldest on my dad’s side, followed by my brother and then about 12 years until the next kiddo was born, 24 years between me and the youngest. I was long moved out of my parents house when the littles were being born on that side. They’re all young adults or in college now. On my mother’s side, I’m one of the oldest, but the span is more like 12 years. I grew up with my aunts and uncles and really enjoyed regular extended family get togethers. I moved 2000 miles away for college when my cousins were little kids and then stayed there, so I didn’t really get to know them then and our family dynamics changed drastically (unearthed trauma, alcoholism, divorce, separation etc…) But I’ve taken the opportunity to get to know them as adults and I really love our time together. We joke that we need a regular cousins’ summit–one to unwrap the family lore/history and get to the bottom of things and to just to enjoy each others’ company/get to know significant others and kids.
I’ve heard of people doing a travel family reunion. Pick a date for a vacation, everyone meets up at an area with a good all-ages attraction (I’m in the Midwest so I would say Branson, MO or Wisconsin Dells). Everyone plans their own transportation and lodging, but you could stay in the same resort or location. Matching shirts! (We have a map of Italy with the location our great-grandparents hailed from and the family name)
Then you could all plan to have a meal or activity together, with options for families to do their own things at other times of the day.
My great-grandparents died within a year of each other, and in the aftermath their 7 children decided to commit to a gathering on the Sunday before Labor Day at a state park near where they grew up. That became an annual family reunion that lasted decades but petered out as that generation died or became unable to travel. Three years ago, my cousin, at a relatively young age, found herself with both parents gone and her military brother often out of reach. She reached out, and I reached back. Together we decided to revive the reunion. Same day, same park. We just held the fourth and it was great, but the lion’s share of the work falls on my cousin. (I live two states away.) Those of us concerned about that have started a discussion about “committees” to break up the work. We’re still figuring it out, but that’s where we’re at.
Just out of pure curiosity, are your kids screen names all fake? (I totally get why you’d do that, on social media I don’t even appear to have children. & if I did I’m sure I’d give them fake names.)
I use pseudonyms for everyone I mention.
One of my cousins (and not the most right-wing one I have) just posted on Facebook that Charlie Kirk was “a giant among men,” so I don’t think I will be organizing a cousin get-together any time soon. You’re lucky to have a group that wants to gather. I hope it’s fun.
Oh I am so late to this party, but my Mom is one of six, over a 19 year span. Her oldest niece is 4 years younger than her youngest sister. My cousins range from 63 years old to 34 years old. The oldest cousins have kids older than the younger, so the generations are mixed up. We are surprisingly good at gathering. My Mom throws a Christmas Open House the weekend before Christmas and 75% of the family shows up. She also summer vacations with her three sisters, and their kids come and go through the weeks.
I have a total of 3 cousins and am only in touch with one of them, so I’m a bit envious of your large family.
Having said that, I think a good first step might be to establish a series of yearly dates, Maybe there’s a month with no holidays and not a lot of birthdays to interfere with and most people are free? Like, we generally have nothing in January, February or April, so I’d probably pick like, the last Saturday in one of those months and set up the expectation that that will be the yearly gathering. Or maybe I’d pick a month that was conducive to good weather or BBQing. Once people have dates established the rest would be easier to set up maybe?
My grandma on my mom’s side is one of three kids. The three sides of the family live in MI, TX, and CA respectively. Once every three years, one side of the family plans a reunion. Sometimes it’s in that side of the family’s home state, but it doesn’t have to be. My side is the Michigan contingent, and when I planned one, I had it in Vermont, just to mix it up. So it can be anywhere.
Every time we have a reunion, we have an auction one night to raise money for the next reunion. Everyone brings things to donate – most are homemade but some people buy things and donate them. One year someone requested recipes from everyone in the family and made cookbooks to sell. Or another year, someone brought items that had belonged to our great-great grandmother. My husband made shelves one year.
There’s usually some kind of charge – when I had it in VT we charged $295 per person for the week, and kids under 18 were free. I planned the food and also had things people could do – go sailing on Lake Champlain, go hiking at Stowe, go to the Ben & Jerry’s factory, etc. Usually it’s a Monday-Thursday and people travel on the weekends. It’s very fun, and a great way to spend time with people I would never, ever see or know otherwise.