Cousins

I remember being infatuated at an early age with my cousins, Melinda and Jan. They were the most beautiful creatures I had ever laid my adolescent eyes on. They are granddaughters of my great aunt Myrtle, my Grandma Carol’s baby sister. Melinda was known as Mindy back then, a name she hates with a passion. At that time her last name was Mackie, and she abhorred the sound the two names made when they were spoken together. Melinda and Jan lived in California with their mother. To my young mind, California was a place I longed for. I wanted to experience the climate, the beaches, and everything else I had heard about. Every top 40 list, every teenager magazine, and every cultural TV show that catered to young people spoke of California as the place to be. If you weren’t there, you were “square.”

Because they lived in California, they obviously weren’t around very often. They only visited maybe once a year. When you adore someone as much as I did, their impending arrival consumed me. What would they be like this year? Would they like me? Would they even talk to me? I was hopelessly smitten by these girls. I became tongue-tied when they were around. When they weren’t visiting I would catch myself staring longingly at a picture of them that hung on my grandparents’ wall. It was hell when they visited because I wanted them to myself. I wanted to be the sole reason for them to speak to anyone. I wanted them to visit me.

What really messed with my mind were the changes that took place in between our visits. Every time I saw them they were older and more prettier, and my adolescent awkwardness just got worse and worse. As puberty approached, my self-confidence fell further, and living in a rural setting as I did only made things worse. My only interaction with the opposite sex occurred at school, and that consisted mainly of boys taunting girls and pretending they hated them. While I liked Jan the most because she had blonde hair (it was that “California girls” thing), Melinda was the one that I seemed to always be aware of. She was oldest, as I am, and was always the decision one, the winner of arguments, and the one that did whatever she wanted to do. My interactions with them mainly consisted of showing off, being bossy to my siblings, and anything else I could think of to catch their attention.

Their visits to our area were never long enough to me because they stayed in Auburn while we lived in Algona. Even though the two towns were adjacent to each other I never got to visit them--it was up to them to visit us. A kind of turning point came when we moved to Auburn. Our new house was on one side of the Auburn City Park, and Melinda and Jan’s grandma’s house was on the other! When they visited during those years we were all teenagers. There was a local fast-food greasy spoon joint called The Grotto right up the street from us that we would hang out at. We fed quarters into the jukebox and ate French fries and soft-serve ice cream cones, and while Melinda and Jan argued over which song to play, I stared--absorbed by their every word.

I loved those times so much.