Branching Out

My mom has one sister and my dad has two brothers. When I was born, I was the first grandchild on both sides of the family. My brother was born when I was not quite 3 and my uncle's two daughters were born when I was 7 and 9, respectively. My mom's sister did not have children and neither did any of her three first cousins nor my dad's mom's brother, so I have no first or second cousins on my mom's side and no second cousins through my paternal grandmother. My dad's dad's brother and his wife did have three children and each had 2-3 children of their own. So in summary, I have a grand total of 1 sibling, 2 first cousins, and 7 second cousins, as well as 2 step-first cousins and 3 step-second cousins, quite a small family by most standards.

I've been a little sad about this for some time. I have friends who have several nieces and nephews and I see pictures on Facebook with the grandparents and their umpteen grandchildren posing together at a reunion. We don't have that in my family. My mom's dad has my brother and me and my dad's parents have 4 grandchildren. Including by marriage, I have 2 aunts and 3 uncles.

A few years ago, in an effort to consolidate the various paper family trees my parents have as well as to help remember to whom I am related and how, I made an account on a genealogy website and plugged in the information from the trees. I now have more than 400 people in my online tree and recently realized I have a lot of third cousins. While the offspring of my parents' siblings total just 2, the descendants of my great-grandparents' siblings are numerous and I have not even found all the names yet. Sure, we don't share a set of grandparents or even great-grandparents, but we do share a set of great-great-grandparents and every person in the infinite number of generations before that, and to me, that still means family.

Just this week I have taken to Facebook to connect with more relatives. I am so excited to be in touch with many of my and my parents' first, second, and third cousins and their children. Did I really think I came from a small family?!