Flashback Friday - Extended Family Memories

Tell about any grandparents, cousins, or other extended family that was special to you growing up. Did they live near you or some distance away? Do you have any particular childhood memories (good OR bad!) of times spent with your grandparents? With your cousins? Did you spend holidays with them? At whose house did you generally gather? Do you still keep up with cousins, aunts & uncles, etc.? Did your paternal relatives and maternal relatives know and get along with each other?

Remember, the questions are just to spur your memories; you don't have to specifically address them, although you are welcome to!

MY FLASHBACK:
We lived about 4-5 hours from both sets of grandparents. We probably saw them 3 or 4 times a year - at Christmas, Easter, and a couple of other miscellaneous weekends. The paternal and maternal grandparents lived less than 2 hours from each other, so it was easy to see both on a long weekend. Most of the aunts and uncles lived in the same town or within an hour of the grandparents, so we would frequently see the whole clan when we visited. I have great memories of the food at the get-togethers on my dad's side of the family - home cooking at its best and lots of it!

My grandparents were pretty opposite. My dad's folks lived in the country and were poor. My granddad was a sharecropper. My siblings have great memories of going to visit them in the country, and my brother spent a week in the summer a time or two. But my granddad died when I was two and my grandmother moved into town. Looking back I realize she lived in a subsidized apartment complex, but that had no meaning for me as a child. It was a tiny one-bedroom apartment. My siblings would stay with cousins, my parents would sleep on my grandmother's "hideaway" couch bed, and I slept with her. That's a sweet memory. She called me her "bedfellow." I can visualize that place as if it were yesterday - including the sheer curtain at the end of the hall over the linen shelves. My cousin and I would play Bride with that curtain, standing behind it and walking up the "aisle" until we outwalked the length of the "veil".

If you looked up "grandmother" in the dictionary, I'm sure her picture would be there. She was loving and sweet, made great food, and loved to play games. We played a lot of Crazy Eight, Canasta, and Scrabble. We all adored her and she loved us. I was ten when she had to move into a nursing home, but we would go visit her there. For years they would bring her in her wheelchair to the big family get-togethers until she was unable to do that. She died when I was 23. I think she was 94.

My other grandparents had a big house; it was actually two houses that had been combined. That granddad was a lawyer. He died of a stroke when I was 11. Sadly, I don't have happy memories of those. My maternal grandmother was the polar opposite of my other one, at least to our family. Besides favoring the other cousins, she could be pretty harsh, manipulative and rude. After my granddad died, my mom went to spend a week with her during the summer for about 5 years. I went with her twice, but after the second one, when my grandmother was pretty awful to me, I told my mother I didn't ever want to go back, and after that she timed her visits when I was at church camp. That grandmother died just after I graduated from college when I was on a ski trip. I am forever grateful to my parents for waiting to tell me until I got back so I wouldn't feel obligated to cut my trip short.

All the cousins on that side of the family were either older or a good bit younger. On my dad's side of the family, we were "stairstepped". There was a set of cousins that was the age of my siblings, and then a set around my age. We hung out together whenever my family went to visit those relatives, but we don't have much in common. I remember they would go ride around the town square for fun in their little town and being from Houston, I thought that was totally boring. I actually am closer to one of the cousins that is my brother's age, although we only see each other at funerals now.


What about you? Post your memories and link up here!