Melanie Heuiser Hill ampersand

author

Melanie Heuiser Hill

Melanie Heuiser Hill ampersand

author

Melanie Heuiser Hill

The Cousin Table

The table that is spe­cial to me has essen­tial­ly noth­ing to do with a phys­i­cal table. It can take place at any table that can seat sev­en peo­ple. What is real­ly impor­tant is the peo­ple, specif­i­cal­ly my cousins. There are sev­en of us, my old­er broth­er, me, and five girls rang­ing in age from 10–16, now. The table most asso­ci­at­ed with this is at my grand­par­ents’ house, but it fol­lows us to any place we eat at.

While the cousin table start­ed at first out of necessity–because in order to seat all fif­teen of my fam­i­ly mem­bers at one table we have to take over the liv­ing room, too–it has con­tin­ued for oth­er rea­sons. Sit­ting at the cousin table has a vari­ety of perks: we get first dibs on all the food, we can talk about things that are more inter­est­ing than what­ev­er adult stuff the adults talk about, and we get some qual­i­ty cousin time. (An unex­pect­ed ben­e­fit is that since some of the younger cousins still get their meat pre­cut for them, a lot of the time the old­er set also gets pre­cut meat, which is convenient.)

As we have all got­ten old­er, the issue of when/if you grad­u­ate from the cousin table has arisen. My broth­er is 22, so by all nor­mal stan­dards he should have tran­si­tioned to the adult table. Orig­i­nal­ly the cut off was when you turn 18, but when that rolled around it was extend­ed to when he grad­u­at­ed high school. But that soon turned into grad­u­at­ing from col­lege, which turned into get­ting mar­ried (he’s not yet), which has been extend­ed pre-emp­tive­ly into hav­ing your own kids, or turn­ing 50 (whichev­er comes first). 

While my broth­er has at least par­tial­ly tran­si­tioned to the adult table (it was about 50% of the time this last vis­it), I’m not sure I will ever tran­si­tion. I am the next old­est, but I don’t think they will ever let me leave. Logis­ti­cal­ly, we can’t all grad­u­ate from the cousin table. As pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned there are a lot of us and we don’t real­ly fit any­where all together. 

The last time my cousins came to vis­it we talked about the future of the cousin table. Essen­tial­ly we decid­ed that the cousin table will prob­a­bly con­tin­ue in some shape for­ev­er. It is the most nat­ur­al divi­sion of our fam­i­ly, and that’s not going to change. There was also some dis­cus­sion of if/when we all have kids, will there be cousins’ chil­drens’ table? 

The cousins table has seen some dra­mat­ic changes over the years; our con­ver­sa­tions have shift­ed from the imag­i­nary games we all played togeth­er to more real life con­ver­sa­tions like col­lege (though we still have plen­ty of very odd con­ver­sa­tions). It has also wit­nessed us all grow­ing up from very small chil­dren, to most­ly self suf­fi­cient humans, capa­ble of cut­ting our own meat, for instance. In any event, the cousin table is a con­stant source of fun and love. 

(The Cousins stand­ing on the table that their Grandad built.)

Mar­ta Hill is the Edi­tor-in-Chief of St. Louis Park High School’s award win­ning news­pa­per, Echo.

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