I have many cousins. My mom was the oldest of 6, out of which 5 had 2 or 3 kids. My dad’s brother has another 2. There are also the kids of my mom’s cousins, who are also cousins.  And the older half-brother of some of my cousins and their cousins from the other end of their family. And finally the parent’s best friend’s son, who is also their godson, and had always been considered a cousin to us. That makes about… 18? 19?

Of all of them, some I don’t care much about, some are ok, some I like very much and there is a couple I consider my favorites.

I know it may sound harsh to talk about having favorite family members, but reality is that it happens everywhere and with everyone. It’s a matter of affinity, more than a matter of love.

So one of my favorite cousins just came to visit me last weekend. It was soooo nice!

He’s about 7 years younger than me, so on my teenage years he was the cute little boy that used to make everyone laugh and his parents go crazy.

Then when he was about 10 or 11 his dad passed on a car accident where all family was in the car, but all survived except daddy. He didn’t cry much at the time.

A few years latter, when he was a teenager already I was there so see his first time of being drunk. And OMG! That was when the pain for having lost daddy came out.  I felt like crying too. For him, for my uncle, for everything. But I didn’t want to show my pain, so I left, went to the bedroom and cried there, quietly, not letting anyone see me.

Then when he was 19 he got his girlfriend pregnant and was a daddy himself at 20. They tried to work it out together, but it didn’t work, so they have separate lives, but still get along well and share the joy of being the parents of their amazing son (now almost 13!)

Career wise, he tried a few different things, until he decided to be a cook. Or a chef. He went to culinary school, which my mom helped to pay, since he had no money and my aunt was not doing too well with her crappy salary and no husband to add to the household income.

Since then he’s a chef and a cook. He has worked for many years on a restaurant in a seaside town in the south coast of Rio de Janeiro. Then he joined sodexho to work on platforms.

But one of the things that were always on his way to get the jobs he wanted was his English skills.

So a couple of months ago he moved to Vancouver, BC, Canada, to spend 6 months there, from which the first 3 would be studying English and the last 3 using the English he learned on a real job, immersed on the workforce so he practices and learns even more from usage, rather than classroom and hanging out with other students.

But enough of his personal life history!

The point of this post is just to tell how happy I was to have him here. Out of all of the family members, he’s one of the ones I thought I’d have less chance to receive at my home due to lack of money to travel around the globe.

But he still made it! He’s here, just a few hours and a border away from me! And the past weekend he actually crossed the border and came down to see me and my family.

It was only a few days, as he arrived on Friday and left on Monday, but it still made me really, really happy.

Next time, we’ll be the ones going up the border to see him there.

Yay!