You Ruined Me!

We're off to a family reunion today at Peace Arch Park.  This is Mike's family, which is, of course, my family as well.  My niece has been hard at work to organize it and I hope it all goes well.  There are lots of people in the family who are really talented and so I expect there will be some music and maybe a poetry slam (my niece is a poet) and there will be lots of food (Mike has made his delicious shepherd's pie and I am going to make a nice coleslaw) and it will be a lovely day.

When the boys were very small, we went back to Saskatchewan to my family reunion.  My parents had both passed away by then, but my sister and I went to represent the family (we're the only offspring).  Rickie was glad that I had had children, since then the Tony Kosar side was going to be continued.  (Hopefully that's not the only reason she's glad about the boys!)  My grandfather had twenty-five children!  He had ten with my grandmother and then fifteen with his second wife!  So when we walked into the little community centre in Buchanan, Saskatchewan, there was the family tree on one wall and it covered the whole wall!  Just with my grandfather's kids and grandkids and, in some cases (faster breeders than me!) great grandkids.  I don't even know all my cousins, there are so many of them and some of them were actually older than my dad, since he was the youngest of the ten first children and my aunt was grown up when he was born.

I'm not especially good at these social events, but families are interesting entities.  You look at all the people and think that you're connected somehow, even though it doesn't appear that you have anything in common with some of them.  I know Mike is quite different from his brothers and sisters and my sister and I have common interests, but we are very different as people.  And then my own kids really reflect my sister's and my personalities.  Anthony is a lot like Rickie and William much more like me.

At my family reunion, they had a photo booth (it was the old days so there was an actual photographer) and each nuclear family was supposed to have its picture taken, so we got ourselves together and started to go in.  When Anthony (who was about three) realized what it was, he broke away from Mike and ran off!  I guess he didn't want his picture taken.  He was about three meters away and he stopped and turned and yelled, "no! no! no!" and when Mike tried to get him and drag him in for the picture, he yelled, "you ruined me!"  I guess a lot of people think that about their parents!  (But hopefully, Anthony doesn't think it now.)