BE: Family

BE: Family

            I come from a family where my father has 11 other brothers and sisters and my mother has 5 brothers and sisters. My entire family is easily over 150 people and still growing as my cousins and I get older and start to have children. As a kid I remember spending a lot of time with my cousins from my mom’s side of the family. Most notably my cousins Bernie and Danny, we were born just between the span of a year so we were pretty close already because of our age. We didn’t go to the same school, but even then I would still see them multiple times a week. We would sleep over at each other’s houses and play video games and watch funny TV shows. Growing up the three of us grew up liking the same things and it was really easy for us to get close. We were doing the same curricular activities, we were on the same soccer team as little kids, we were in the same karate class, and same guitar class. We are still really close to this day but we don’t see each other as frequently as we did when we were little kids. From my dad’s side of the family all of my cousins were at least 6 years older than me and I was the youngest. It was hard for me to connect as easily with my cousins because of the age gap, especially my male cousins because when they were 14 + I was just an 8 year old. As a young 8 year old boy they seemed kind of intimidating because they would play pretty rough and I was afraid to get hurt. Seeing that my male cousins were scary to me, I went with my female cousins and had much more fun with them because they were like motherly figures because they would look after me and be nice to me. My aunts and uncles are very likeable, they always seem to be very happy and understanding. Over the years all of my aunts and uncles have always been helpful in giving advice or taking care of me if my parents were at work. The three sisters of my mom Ana, Yola, and Irma have all treated me like their son at one point or another because my mom has done the same for their kids and we have always been kind to each other.