Cousin Bond

Lately my cousin Jacob has started emailing me.  A couple summers ago, I emailed him a few times, but never with much response - he could not bother checking an email.  Now, he writes me every couple days, sometimes multiple times a day, and gets quite impatient when I do not respond within the same time frame.

“But Jacob, I have 5 tests and a paper this week.”  Doesn’t register.  He’s 11, and he just had like five days off from school because of a massive snow storm.  I wish a foot of snow closed school here.  He’s in Kentucky, and they’d have a snow day if there was one inch.

Jacob and I have this bond.  I can’t really describe it any other way.  We’re just close, and nearly ten years of age difference doesn’t matter.  We used to be neighbors; only 11 rows of peach trees separated our houses.  We’d tramp over all 35 acres of orchard playing with nothing but imagination.  Jacob and I drove dump trucks in the mud and raced on tricycles and wagons.

For the last few years now my cousins have lived in Guam, and now they’re temporarily in Kentucky.  Very few things have changed since we’ve been apart.  He no longer has an imaginary friend, and we no longer hold hands when we walk.

Jacob and I only hang out for a few weeks each year, but man, we really make the time count.  This last summer we worked together in the orchard for a week or so before Sasha’s wedding.  It was pear harvest and I drove tractor with a bin trailer on the front.  Jacob rode on the front in the bins, or on the forks on the back.  I wish I had pictures of that.  It was a party.

I miss his contagious laugh and his “let’s have fun” attitude.  I wish I had a way to get him a plane ticket up to visit.

Man I miss that kid!