Just like your mother...

Call it the five year itch. It's been about half a decade since our clan last got together in West Chester -- and it's about time we laid eyes on one another once again.

So I have sent out an email to as many relatives as I can think of -- and about ready to concede the neccesity of sending out snail mail to those more elderly relatives who aren't leading lives where the real and the virtual sometimes can't be distinguished.

It's often pained me that I have no close relatives in the Philadelphia area. It seems that in the area in which we live, lots of families have relatives who reside close by, able to come over for dinner, or babysit, or take kids out to dinner and a movie.

But I am very rich in cousins.

The Jacksons, Singers and Smiths have seeded themselves, like dandelions, all over the United States. In my family, it doesn't matter if you are a Jackson to the first or three power, a Singer who lives in Israel, a Smith whose dad joined the John Birch Society. You are one of us.

Tonight I heard from a cousin...our grandma's were sister in laws. I think. She teaches on a native American reservation well west of Pennsylvania -- something I've never even imagined. Clearly, I need to meet her.

Anyhow, in her first Facebook wall to wall posting she said she'd named her daughter after my grandmother. Then commented how much I looked like my mom.

I know I'll like her already!

There will be a lot of details...food, hotels, maps, shuttling folks around, reservations -- that aren't neccesarily my strongest point. Lists. Lists. There must be an online tutorial or site for organizationally deficient people who are planning family reunions.

But rallying my shadow (invisible?) side is a small price.

I am getting so excited at the idea that my kids will get to meet their wonderful, talented, passionate, generally leftist (also generally nonreligious)...hmmm...cousins.

And I have a feeling the aunts and uncles, the dads and moms, are going to be smiling in what must be a socialist paradise -- thrilled to hear that the clan is gathering once again.