This post is dedicated to my two cousins, Kim and Kristen, who were closest to me in age on my mom’s side of the family and probably my best friends growing up.
L to R: Kristen, Amy, Kim
Now that we’re older, paired off and live 4000km+ away from each other, there’s no harm in posting these things…….. right?
Paired with the fact that we were older than a flood of our younger cousins, we have always thought ourselves so mature. Our friendship was exclusive and not extended to our ‘annoying’ younger cousins (sorry, guys! haha). We dubbed ourselves The Three Musketeers so long ago that I can’t remember and, to this day, still sign all of our emails with our awesome secret code names.
Us in our new flannel nightgowns from Grandma
When the entire family was gathered, we would sneak away and sit on our own, which, with a large family like ours, usually meant a cold storage room or empty bathroom. When the younger ones found us, we would come up with excuses and games to get them away from us until one would cry to their mom that we were excluding them.
We once put all the younger ones in grandma’s bath tub and turned the lights off, telling them that they were on a magic carpet ride. [I suppose this dates the event post 1992.] They had to stay in the bath tub and close their eyes, or else they would fall off Aladdin’s carpet and be excluded from the experience. We took this opportunity to slowly sneak out of the bathroom one by one, leaving them to squeals of delight for a little while until one of them peeked.
Grandma Joy would host sleepovers for us every once in a while and we would relish in the opportunity to hang out, just the three of us. It was such a treat – dinner at Wendy’s followed by a nice swim, some Little House on the Prairie, leave-in hair curlers and then sleeping bags in the lounge. When we played mermaids in the pool, we all got to be Ariel because it had to be fair. Who wanted to be Ursula, anyways?! Kim was the best at this and came up with the most elaborate story lines. It would figure that she went on to pursue an English degree!
Late at night, after being hushed a million times for her incessant witch cackle of a laugh, Kristen would convince us that we should make breakfast in bed for Grandma to make up for it. Kim and I heartily agreed and the three of us would stumble through what was likely a terrible excuse for poached eggs & toast at 6am, just to surprise her. Grandma later told me that she didn’t like breakfast in bed because we would just sit there, watching her eat and keep asking if she liked it. Can we say AWKWARD!
Another pastime of ours was making up dances to songs that we liked. Kristen knows that there is an embarrassing lip synching video of us somewhere! Once, at Kim’s summer cottage, we got in trouble for dancing to a Spice Girls song (our families are religious). It was worth the lecture about secular music, though. It was also the first time I ever wore mascara!
Speaking of makeup, Kim was the first to be allowed to wear it, so we’d ALWAYS do makeovers at her house. She always seemed so naturally glamourous to me, though, and I envied her having two older sisters. Sometimes we’d get lucky and Kristy (Kim’s older sister) would help. If Kathy (Kim’s other older sister) wasn’t at home, we would most definitely try on all her platform shoes.
Amy and Kim, skating on the Mill Pond in Dorchester. Snapped in a rare moment when we weren't shovelling our own private rink and having Lincoln the dog pull us around it.
Kristen and I bonded over crafty things like scarves and making anonymous ransom-style letters to each other. We’d cut out all the letters from magazines and everything. Then, to convince each others’ parents we had secret admirers, we’d put on the back of the envelope “SWAK” alongside a lip print. Honestly. Once Kristen even accompanied this with a return address. I used to bust her chops about not spending as much time on my letters as I did on hers. I needed her letters to be longer because I was “a really fast reader”.
I realize that this blog post means little to those who don’t know the three of us, but I just wanted to publicly express how much their friendship has meant to me over the years.
Here are some other things that might stir up memories with you guys:
- Kraft Dinner x 2093245234
- Kim doesn’t like Amy Grant, oh no!
- Touching Lincoln the dog in such a way that he couldn’t stand it and wanted to bite your finger off
- A surprise visit at Northwinds
- New Year’s Eve with string lights and wigs
- Jumping on the trampoline
- That one time at my old apartment, probably the last time we were all together
- Licking our breakfast plates clean to get a sucker
- I sat on your hampster
- Hiding in the treehouse and talking about boys
- Making rock forts at Northwinds
And to my seemingly annoying little cousins, I love you guys too.
See you all at Christmas, I hope!
Yours truly,
TMAM
*wipes a few homesick tears*
