Good Times

Hey I just noticed that if you take out the ‘s’ then it becomes the song “Good Time” by Owl City and C. R. Jespen.

Anyhow, that’s not the point. Just yesterday, my cousins left America to go back to (insert country here). Let’s call it ‘X.’

They were here for three weeks, and it was the most fun three weeks of the summer. They are awesome people with funny personality and I really do miss them. I wonder why our family had to move to America and not stay in X. I wonder why it’s me whose family was in America, in a foreign land, rather than someone else. All of my other cousins and aunts and uncles (nine aunts) live in X. It kind of makes you feel lonely and isolated, don’t you think?

I mean, of course, being in America is really fun, and it has its advantages and stuff, especially if you want to succeed in life, blah blah. And yes, I have lots of friends and good memories here.

But most of my family is halfway across the world, in X. (Except for my aunt, who is a nun, and she lives in San Francisco, but she moves a lot, so I can’t really pinpoint the exact distance I live from my closest-living relative.) And most definitely, all of my cousins are in X. To what I hear, they see each other so often, (as my cousin Steve teases, “I’ve seen them so much, I’m almost sick of them~ XP”) and they can always go to their house within thirty to forty minutes.

Sometimes I wish my cousins, my first cousins, would move to America. (By first cousins I mean the children of my mom’s older sister. She has six sisters, so… yeah.)

It’s so much fun being with your family, even your cousins, because for some reason, whether it’s the second time meeting them or the first, you feel closer to them than you feel with friends at school, who you meet nearly every day. You feel like you’ve met those cousins yesterday, and the day before that, and that this isn’t a meeting once a year.

At least, that’s how I feel.

Looking around my house, I can remember just like yesterday when I was doing Algebra II problems, looking at the clock every five seconds, (meaning, technically, with the whole distraction, one could say I was looking at Algebra II problems), anxiously wondering what my cousins would say when they came to our house for the first time and took a look at America. I remember just like yesterday when they barged into the house, full with smiles and excitement, with their rolly bags and jackets, coming into the house to make sure they made lots of noise and memories. When they came into my room, and I still couldn’t believe they were inside my house, and that they were sitting on my bed, and asking me where the bathroom was, and that America’s so big, and why we can’t walk by ourselves to the park, and why we couldn’t go somewhere far by ourselves…

Just like yesterday when my cousins were sulking around the house, saying that the first day was going by way too slow, how is three weeks going to go by, and them unpacking the thousands of food from X, with yummy X crackers and candy as well as a pencil set for me. Just like yesterday when I felt kind of awkward with them.

And it was just like yesterday that I was freaking out that there was three days left, and H would glare at me (jokingly) and Andrew would flick my head and say “Let’s play a game” just like yesterday we were running in the grass trying to catch the frisbee in Frisbee Football, a game Alex played at his school, and was really fun—Just like yesterday I was telling them a fun card game and how we played it until two in the morning…

Just like yesterday.

And just like tomorrow, the time always comes, when we have to comment on how fast time flies, and how we’ll miss each other, and wave to each other until the other is out of sight, disappearing into the line of people holding their passports to go to another land…

 

And like tomorrow, the day will come when they’ll come again, and we’ll go to X too, and we’ll meet each other at least once a year, I hope. I hope that we won’t have to say that we’ve met our cousins only twice, that we know who they are and what their favorite food is, and what game they play 24/7, and what brand of clothing they like the most.

Looking around the house, they’ve left no trace that they were here, no trace at all, just like they weren’t here, almost. Except for the Nike tag they forgot to throw away, and the game that shows on the screen when I turn on my iPod, and a warmth in our hearts, hope that we’ll see them in just 365 days..