As Cousins Go

We've grown up together; like brothers, like sisters.  Often, "such a resemblance; I can see it through their eyes; smiles are so alike", these echo through past years.  Our parents shared the table with our 'grands'. Close knit bonds that can never be totally broken.  We carry it on into this new generation as naturally as breathing.

We took turns being taller, measured against the hallway doorframe.  The wide, worn floorboards bear the curve of our footprints. The stair treads' paint rubbed away under our little slipper-shod feet; up to the bed under the hallway eaves, down to the closet near the bathroom, where toys were kept.

Hand in hand, down an old lane; up and down the sliding trails in the back pasture.  Forgotten dreams and broken promises which passed between us --through the trees-- or whispered while we giggled ourselves to sleep in the parlor bedroom.

At the end of the day these four feet could not turn in for the night until the round basin of water and bar of ivory soap were brought to the cement porch beyond the backdoor.  There the dirt of the day would be washed away; poured out on the grass; forgotten until tomorrow when we would again rush into a new adventure.

It is not that we meant for life to take us miles apart --marriage and family affairs turning our minds toward the hear-and-now.  We cousins, once so intertwined; still close, somewhere deep down in our very being, but now reaching up toward separate goals and horizons.

Many times on my trek up the hill I pass by these cousins; the white and the yellow birch. Their roots so closely knit together but the trunks becoming more and more separated as they have grown taller, reaching for the sun. Until death they will not be completely severed because their family tie began deep down below the surface.  It is this picture that sparked the story from my own childhood memories.