<p>My first cousins on both sides live far away–in fact, cousins on my father’s side are in Eastern Europe. I have kept in touch mostly through email/cards/visits–but really haven’t visited the ones living abroad since my folks passed away (10 years ago). When my D got married in '09, we invited all of my first cousins in the US (3) and the cousin who was closest to me growing up came to the wedding with her husband. She and my brother and I had a great time reminiscing at the rehearsal dinner. We agreed to get together during the summers. Last year, I visited my cousin in Chicago; this summer she’s coming to our summer place. I’m really glad we made the effort to do this. I suppose if we didn’t get along, it wouldn’t have been a fun visit, but we do like spending time together and intend to continue to do so.</p>
<p>There are many of my cousins with whom we spent what seems in hindsight, like a great deal of time together growing up, but I live far away and am pretty much down to Christmas cards & recently discovering a few on FB & email.</p>
<p>i was touched to read in a recent Christmas card that many of those people who love nearby still get together as cousins with their kids, nice to know that as the Aunties & Uncles have died, some of the cousins still make the effort</p>
<p>I have forty-some first cousins…can’t even count them - 22-26 on each side…two have passed away. Three are on Facebook; only one posts very often, so I feel "in touch "with her, even though I haven’t seen her since the 80s. The live literally from coast to coast. I wouldn’t recognize most of them unless they bear a striking resemblance to their parent.</p>
<p>I only have nine cousins. I’m facebook friends with one of them. I haven’t see the 4 on my Dad’s side in thirty years. The ones on my Mom’s side I saw this summer at a memorial service. The one on facebook I’ve seen off and on pretty regularly because she became quite good friends with one of my sister-in-laws. The others I see at least once every couple of years. (We share a cabin in Vermont - so there’s lots of e-mailing about the upkeep, now that my parent’s generation has given us the responsibility of taking care of it.)</p>
<p>Cousins? Hmm… Some of them I barely know. I see my second cousin twice removed (same great-grandmother) every few years though. We just really get along. My nieces and nephews (one of whom is older than I am)? Facebook mostly. My siblings? Every few years. My brother turns 80 this year, I last saw him at a cousin’s husband’s funeral last year, but he calls a couple of times a year and we do talk. I’d like to see him more but he lives in Kansas. My sister in CA? Saw her last year. Ditto the sisters in NJ and NY. It’s be easier if they lived closer or I did.</p>
<p>Wow, sorry to read about the rejection. Nothing like trying to be nice.</p>
<p>I see a lot of my neices and nephews several times a year, and they are my friends on FB. Although, it is clear that they only let me see certain things. But, that is OK, I don’t need to know about the night they got drunk, etc. </p>
<p>I used to send letters and packages to my cousin’s grown kids and grandkids who live far away til one day I realized they had not acknowledged anything I had sent in years. I was only sending them because of my cousin whom I have a close relationship with. So I have stopped sending anything to her grown kids.</p>
<p>I am close to some cousins, others I wouldn’t know if I ran them over. My kids are very close to their cousins on my husbands side. We spend a lot of time together each summer and have traveled with some of them on week long trips. H has actually suggested we go on a cruise several times during the holidays. The kids refuse because they love getting together with my H’s family even though they are dying to go on a cruise.</p>
<p>I have three first cousins, all on my father’s side, the children of his one sibling, his brother. (My mother was an only child.) I see two of my cousins (and their children – each has one) every year at Thanksgiving; they don’t live close by but return to their parents’ house on Long Island, where I’ve been going on Thanksgiving just about every year since I was a baby. (There’s a picture of me with one of my cousins in that house, taken on Thanksgiving in 1956.) The third of my first cousins lives much farther away, but usually comes back every summer with her husband, and I try to see them then. I’ve met one of her kids once; the other one (who already has two kids of his own) never.</p>
<p>Since my father is 90, and my uncle and aunt are both over 85, I’ve had some vague conversations with my cousins about trying to carry on the tradition of seeing each other annually even after the older generation isn’t around anymore. I hope it works out somehow. I think it would mean a lot to J., too, since the two second cousins he sees every year, even though they’re 7 and 8 years older than he is, are his closest relatives in his generation and he gets along very well with them. He’s an only child with no first cousins at all, the only grandchild of his four grandparents. (So I have no nieces or nephews to be concerned about!)</p>
<p>So, as first cousins go, I guess I’m as in touch with mine as most people. (Of course, having only three of them makes it easier. My father had about 20 first cousins, only one of whom is still alive. My maternal grandmother had > 60. We have not been a prolific family in recent generations.)</p>
<p>On the other hand, I haven’t seen my only sibling, my sister (a widow who had no children), in more than 15 years. When J. got together with her in a village near Budapest in October, it was the first time he’d seen her since he was 5. We write each other once or twice a year. For a long time, I’ve been trying to talk her into joining this century and getting a computer so at least we could exchange emails.</p>
<p>Facebook is so nice for keeping up with relatives. I can only take my sister in small doses and she lives hundreds of miles away. She posts on Facebook al the time, so I can keep up with her life without having to actually go visit her.</p>
<p>My youngest D has found a number of distant relatives on Facebook by looking for folks with my maiden name (which is her middle name). She found folks in the US as well as in Eastern Europe, Canada, and Australia. They are distant cousins–my father had 6 brothers and 1 sister and 4 of the brothers immigrated to either the US, Canada, or Australia. She keeps trying to figure out how she’s related when someone responds to a friend request. I don’t have a clue and would love to do some research, but don’t know if it’s possible given that most of the records must be in a foreign country. Has anyone whose parents immigrated to the US tried to do such research?</p>