Cousins

A kitchen packed with family: clean-up chaos after a multi-menued meal. Clanging dishes. 

“Where’s the top for this?” 

“Could someone put this on the shelf behind you?” 

“Shall we save this bit of salad?” 

“Glasses get washed by hand”

“Can you move a bit to the left? I want to get to the fridge”….

This wasn’t just normal routine after a family dinner. We were being entertained by two animator-cousins whose energy and increasing excitement charged the room. Breathless overlapping sentences in their eagerness to share. How can two adults, recently meeting after growing up on different continents, get so excited over Sonic the Hedgehog as a comic for Heavens sake???  IDW, PnG, 2D animation, the air was bursting with totally incomprehensible terminology and delight. 

You couldn’t help but feel it.  The usually-dulling kitchen clean-up was automatically buzzing faster and faster. It was exciting to experience, thrown into the clatter, the strengthening relationships right now being built on 12.5% of their shared blood.

“Cousins are more important than many people assume,” says family researcher Karsten Hank from the University of Cologne.  “Alongside siblings, cousins are the relatives with whom we can connect more easily…the relationships with them are usually less close, but also less conflict-ridden…. [they] remain a member of the clan for life….you can always pick up where you left off with a cousin, even after years of no contact……..this balance of connection without pressure or obligation is what makes cousins special…. they share a certain intimacy — even if they otherwise belong to completely different worlds…. cousins expand the net that catches you when you need support,” says Hank. *

All well and good. But what if you are nowhere near a cousin? I grew up in China and India, far far away from any relative other than my immediate family (and at times only half of them). Looking back, the memories of occasional encounters with my cousins remain indelible:

• As a 9-year-old, knitting baby booties for a newly-arrived cousin from another universe (“America” was only a word my parents used, — no memory. ).  One sock was baby-sized, the other about Size 10. The only colour of wool Mom had was grey, and I wondered what the baby would think, not having blue.
• Decades later, sneakily going to Holland, joining a costume parade to celebrate that “baby”, now being the chosen Prince of his Village, and startling the heck out of him by removing our masks in a packed, jubilant hall of celebrators. 
• As a high school graduate, I once met my cousin out shopping in a local town in New York state: I wanted to stay near her, revelling in the fact that she was my kin and I was that near enough to meet her by chance.
• Sister and Cousin – bridesmaids at my wedding.
• Mesmerised by Cousin Earl telling a story with a panache they say that was inherited from our Grandfather I never met.
• Once, while visiting, I watched my hand writing a cheque.  The only trouble was, I didn’t feel anything.  It was Cousin Betsy who was writing it, with a hand so similar that I thought it was mine.

BUT NOW…

Realising how vitally important it is to connect to those who share my genes, and being able to regulate my own life, I delight in regular phone calls, emails, cards, and contacts, picking up from a lifetime missed by living apart, rejoicing in triumphs, and grieving in griefs, because I can do that now, despite separated lives.  Because we are cousins.

*Information taken from “Why Cousins Matter” https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/cousins-important-demographics/

Zucchini Bread

Whizzing back from the multi-other-worlds of my cousins, I realised the other day that we were supposed to bring “a gift from our abundance” to the Lammas (first fruits) celebration of Hedgerow Communion, celebrated way up in the Black Mountains in the grounds of a 15^th century church.  I only had half a courgette (zucchini) left.  So, I rummaged in the recipe box a carpenter made for me for Home Ec class in India when I was 14. 

There I found the recipes my sister Anne gave me well over 60 years ago, when she was dealing with the over-abundance of vegetables that her surprisingly successful husband had produced that year.  Here’s one way she responded to the zucchini glut.  

The bread whips quickly together in a food processor. Add nuts at that very end.

Find a cup that measures 8 fl ozs  (about 240 ml) , and use it for your cup measurements.  Teaspoons and tablespoons are the same. 

Oven: 325 F, low moderate temperature.  Prepare loaf tin.

1. Beat together: 1 cup sugar, ½ cup oil, 2 eggs, 2 tablespoons grated orange peel until blended.
2. Add 1 ½ cups plain flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon soda bicarb, ½ tsp salt, ¼ tsp nutmeg, ½ teaspoon (or more) ground ginger, 1 cup grated zucchini.  Mix well.
3. Add ½ cup nuts.
4. Pour into lined loaf tin/s. Smooth the top.
5. Bake for 55 minutes, or until a cocktail stick (toothpick) comes out clean when inserted in the middle. (For small loaf tins, check after 35 mins.)
6. Cool.  Slice.  Add butter or cream cheese, or lemon curd, anything else you like, or eat plain.

(I used three small loaf tins for one recipe.)