children (bleh gross)

Been thinking a lot lately about the way that children bring people together. I think there's a common belief that in front of a kid everyone should get along and try to be less argumentative, more willing to let things ago.

I think about the differences between my parents and my aunts and uncles and the way that raising their kids brought them all together for a while. As my siblings and cousins and I got older they didn't have that need anymore.

In fact, I think it was our differences that split them apart. I have a distinct and ever-present hatred of my cousin. He made it his business to torture me for much of my childhood and didn't grow up to be a very good person. A few years ago, now my aunt may as well have asked me to Babysit him (he was 20 years old at the time) and I haven't really spoken to her since then. It was pretty underhanded of her she wanted me to housesit and didn't tell me Maks would be there. He had been stealing from her and getting mixed up in bad crowds and I guess she thought my influence would somehow help with that. I don't know why she didn't just ask my brother he actually likes Maks. Anyways over the next few months it turned into this whole situation, and it ended up becoming a fight between our parents. They haven't spoken much or hung out in a while now.

I remember being a kid and sitting on my Auntie's tailgate watching my uncle fish and my cousin and brother swim. I remember thinking about the permanence of that feeling of love and togetherness. Now I think maybe that was something that they had all crafted together. My mom calls it her bubble, and I still feel it today.

I live far away now, and I don't see them ever. I am disconnected from my brother because of a fight I couldn't let go of and whether he likes it or not he really is the way I connect to the rest of my family.

We had an easter celebration with my wife's family yesterday, her little brother turned 9 this year and we went to Lazer tag. He and I spent all night playing Roblox games together (so I could make sure he wasn't playing anything weird). I wonder if he feels that same kind of permanence that I felt when I was his age. I hope that he does. When I talk to him about life and about video games, I hear my uncle's voices speaking through me. I remember what it felt like when my Uncle Dave insisted that I learn StarCraft because "in Korea they start young cause they have higher APM." I think about the fishing trips I went on with my friend's dad and the time I caught a minnow at the lake with my uncle Jay. Now that I'm older I know that my uncle Jason is a racist, now that I'm older I think about the strange comments he made to my wife because she's Mexican. I think about the look in the minnow's eye as I pulled the hook from its mouth and dropped it into a five-gallon bucket.

That place of innocence in my childhood where it didn't matter to me what went on in the daily politically charged lives of my family will always be part of me. I think my mom was estranged from her siblings at a young age, much like I am now. She moved to California to live in a van with my dad, a surfer and a pothead who grew up in the mountains near Yosemite. Of course, that's my distorted view of it 30 years later. She's talked to me about how her and my father found refuge in each other from upbringings that felt unsafe, unstable and unsure. She's talked to me about how her siblings had made her feel that way. Her sister Melissa (Jason's wife) saw my mom with her two children and wanted a child of her own. But her or her husband were infertile, I carry vague memories of the days leading up to my cousin's adoption. I remember their trip to Kazakhstan, the woman driver sticker my aunt had to put on her rental car, the souvenirs, the chess set, the stories of their culture on the other side of the world. And a baby. My cousin Maksim.

I remember the way he would pull my hair, smash my things and bully me; I would think about the stories they told me. How he had been left in an orphanage by his birth mother, how he was only the way he was because of the suffering he had been through. I understood, and up to a certain point it was enough for me to let it go. I remember the lengths they went to try and preserve that permanence; I could hear it in their voices when they told me I shouldn't fight with my cousin and that I needed to understand where he was coming from. When I say that I hate him those memories are what play in my head. Alongside them now are more recent memories, when his parents kicked him out, what my brother told me about the strange comments Jason would make towards him because he is Kazakh. You wouldn't know it by looking at him, he looks just like my brother and I, and our other cousins in Utah too. Now that I am older, I know that my aunt and uncle picked him that way. 

I remember the chasm my aunts and uncles crossed to try and be a happy family all together in one place. I remember the day my cousin Arya was born. I remember how my uncle Dave went from being a bachelor with roommates to splitting a house in a nice neighborhood with my uncle Phil and aunt Sharon. He had lived in our garage when I was young, and he had a jar full of spiders that he kept as pets. When one of the spiders died, he would watch the other spiders scramble to eat it. I remember the garden he and my father had in our backyard, and I remember the first time I ate a cherry tomato. They said "yeah, it tastes better when you grow it yourself."

Phil and Sharon moved from Utah when Arya was little, they wanted her to grow up somewhere nice, I think. I imagine they saw the little community between me, my siblings, and my cousin and wanted that for their daughter. Around this time too my family would put on beach parties with live music and beer and food and lots of weed (though I didn't know it at the time). It was so strange to me to grow up and meet other people who had been children like me at those parties. It was so strange to grow up and get into punk and see Dr. Know live and realize that one time I had a sleepover with the singer's nephew. We sat in the weird little treehouse my dad built and looked at the stars together. 

Arya and my sister got on well I think, and I would be curious to know what her experience of having a little cousin was like. For a while we all got along so well. Her little brother griffin was born a few years later and I think I remember being in the hospital with my aunt Sharon and the feeling of his tiny baby hand wrapped around my finger. I remember that feeling now with my students, they're all between six and 9 years old and I feel like I'm not really supposed to have physical contact with them. Sometimes though one of the younger kids will ask to hold my hand and I'll say "hmmm I guess it's okay if you hold my pinky" I try my best to preserve that world of innocence for them at my job and every day I find myself thinking more and more about my experience at their age. 

As time went on life in California got more and more expensive and my uncle Phil and auntie Sharon moved away. They found better work and a better lifestyle in Denver Colorado. My uncle Dave went with them, though he doesn't live with them anymore. I'm told he found a life with a nice lady, and they own a farm together. I think he's become a stepfather to her children and from what I know of him it's probably been quite an interesting challenge. My aunt Melissa and uncle Jason moved further up the coast of California, she got a job teaching at a nice school and they found a place to live nearby. Arya and Griffin are getting older and I'm sad that I'm not part of their lives but they seem happy. Eventually my wife and I will plan take a trip to see them (and maybe go snowboarding hahaha). 

My cousins in Utah have multiple kids of their own. I think their lives have been harder than mine in a lot of ways. Not much to do in Grantsville but drugs and play football. I don't really know much about their lives, but I imagine they had the same kind of home life my parents had tried to escape from almost 30 years ago now. I hope that their children grow up feeling loved. I hope to meet them one day.

I can't imagine myself becoming a father. I think kids are fun in short bursts, but I certainly wouldn't want one around all of the time. I'm happy being the cool uncle, the fun teacher, the brother-in-law who plays Roblox to make sure you don't play anything weird. 

As far as I know my cousin Maks is homeless. My mom has reconnected with her sister, but I still think about the cruelty of that a lot. To take someone who had been abandoned by his birth mother (he was taken by the Kazakhstan version of cps due to neglect) Raise them as your own and when you're dissatisfied with the person he becomes, throw him out on the street. Thats intense, I don't know if I can let my aunt and uncle back into my world, not for a while at least. I can't let Maks in either though. He's a thief and an asshole and a misogynist. He stole my sister's underwear and my brother's savings. 

I think for now I just want to enjoy being part of my wife's family. I want to contribute to the preservation of her little brother's bubble, and I want to be a safe space for my students. I think that children are an art project that is taken on by a whole community. I remember all of the work that made me who I am.