annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Telephone Another lovely day - two in a row - woo hoo! My cousin R (daughter of my birth mother's sister, who also died in her twenties), called me tonight. This is our first ever conversation, though we've been edging towards each other since Nov 2005, when I paid a researcher forty quid to try and find my lost family and had R's father's phone number in my hand within twenty minutes. Oh man. This is huge. I've fantasised about these cousins - the only living relatives on my birth mother's side of the family since I was a child, always. Until 2005 I didn't even know what sex they were, just that my aunt had been told she was infertile so had adopted a baby, had then fallen pregnant, given birth and died. The two widowed fathers (mine and theirs) didn't keep in touch and I had no idea even where in the country they lived. So anyone who looked a bit like me, was always a possible - the ones who looked as if they'd be nice, at least. Anyway - I could write for hours about this, but it's almost 1 a.m. and ED plus grandson are arriving for the weekend tomorrow, so, in brief it was wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I'd just put a big funny shaped log on the fire and the them music for Eastenders had just started when the phone rang. I assumed it would be ED and was going to cut her off abruptly - phoning at the beginning of 'Enders when Heather's just been killed by junior psycho Ben and poor old Dot hasn't even found out yet - what was she thinking? But a little voice said, "It's R, your cousin R? How are you?" and I just felt a big whoosh of a thrill and turned that telly right off. We got straight into it really quickly - about two or three minutes of minimal awkwardness, before establishing that we seem to see the world in the same way. I said fuck first, she mentioned weed, I brought up therapy and we both relaxed a bit more. I mean I'd have wanted to know her whatever she was like - my friends are many and various - but us swearing, dope-smoking, therapy survivors know we can ignore the formalities and get down to the nitty gritty even when we're not long lost cousins. We both drifted about, went to college at thirty, drifted some more, got professionally qualified at forty, and both of us finally at the age of forty managed to ask our fathers to tell us about our mothers, like exactly why and when did they die and where are they buried. We are both currently involved in "it's complicated" style relationships with men we lived with for many years, then separated but kind of stayed together. Awesome. I'm going to meet her in May - we fixed a date. All good. Sweet dreams xx 11:58 p.m. - 22.03.12 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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