Two of Chris’s cousins who live in Melbourne and Sydney are here in New York visiting us for the next week as the last stop on their big North America holiday for the last several weeks. I’ve met them a couple times before in Melbourne around Christmas, but this is their first time visiting us together here in the States.
Everyone on Chris’s side of our family knew that we were engaged except for the two of them, and Chris had purposely planned it this way so that we’d at least be able to tell two people in his family in person about our engagement. Chris’s other cousin and girlfriend were on FaceTime with us when they arrived, so they also got to witness my telling the girls that we were engaged. It was one of those really special moments when there’s so much screaming and laughter and smiles that you know as it is happening that it will be one of the most memorable moments in your life. It was the highlight of our day today, telling them about our engagement (or really, my just saying, “We have news. Guess what?!” and then sticking out my hand with my shiny engagement ring), and since Chris captured it on video, will forever be one of those videos that will get played over and over, and be a captured moment we will never tire of.
After spending the day with them hysterically laughing, being terribly loud and attracting attention everywhere we went because of our crazy volume all together, I realized that they are really like my cousins now. I feel comfortable telling them anything and everything about myself, even to an extent that I may not even share with my own friends. And my own cousins? Forget about it. I’ve finally accepted in mind after many years of struggling that my own cousins, at least the three from my dad’s older brother and wife, and I will never have a functional relationship. They will constantly disappoint me and fall short of my expectations no matter what happens in our respective lives. So it will always be a work in progress for me to just choose to stop taking everything so personally that they say and do (and… don’t do, in the case of not acknowledging or caring about our engagement) and to realize that now, I have new cousins who actually do care to know who I really am and love me and will be ecstatically happy that Chris and I are spending the rest of our lives together. Chris and I are not the only ones happy about this. We have special people in our lives who are happy for us, too.