Growing up, we were six. My mum has a brother and a sister, and within about four years of each other, each family had produced two girls. Two of our cousins lived far away, in Nova Scotia, but the other two were within a day's drive, up in Toronto. We spent every holiday together. Any long weekend was an excuse to pack into the van in the early hours of the morning and head up to see the cousins.As time went by, my sister and my cousin Sarah gravitated towards each other. Both with their long brown hair, we used to call them the twins, and they reveled in the name. That left myself and Rachel to hang out together. It made sense to us; my middle name is Rachel, and so we fit together.
We were an unlikely pair. I was tall and brown-haired and awkward. She was a tiny, red-haired pixie, graceful and athletic. But it worked. Rach and I were best buddies growing up, and when she married my friend from first grade and moved to the States, just down the street from me, it only got better. There are some people who have never met their cousins, people who aren't close to them at all. In our family, cousins are sisters.And this afternoon, my little red-haired sister is having her first baby. She's in the hospital, her husband and mother at her side, and I'm an ocean away waiting for news.
I know you don't know her, and you don't love her like I do, but I'm bursting with this news, and I just have to share it with someone. Because that ocean feels pretty wide right about now.
