I grew up in a large extended family which includes several cousins; each of us five siblings had one or more cousins of the same age. Some of my most fond memories are the ones of the afternoons in grade school when after classes our moms would take us all to our nonna‘s on the hills of Florence for hours of outdoors playing and some of the most incredible homemade merende (afternoon snacks). Those truly were unforgettable days!

Also our children have enjoyed their numerous cousins during their summer and winter vacations in Italy and Switzerland, but at home in the States things have been quite different for them. In the U.S. it has always been just the three of them. All things have their positive and negative aspects; my children greatly missed having their cousins to play with regularly, especially knowing that they had several around their age in Europe. Once my first born, while in the third grade, asked me, “Can I pretend Andrew is my cousin?” Of course he could, but I understood his sense of loss.

On the other hand, the fact that our children didn’t grow up each around cousins of the same age resulted in a closeness between them that my siblings and I, perhaps because we could always rely on other kids to play with, didn’t need to create between us. Their relationship has always been deeply special; they have always been there for each other, learning daily from life and each other at the same time in a way that I have never witnessed in any other set of siblings, here or abroad. My friends have expressed utter disbelief when told that my now adult kids would explore the West Coast from Seattle to California for a couple of weeks on a trip together; by choice just the three of them!

Oddly enough we probably might have to thank the much suffered absence of an extended family around us for the fact that our children are each other’s best friends and ours is an especially tight knit family.