Cousins

When my children were growing up, I told them I had a lot of cousins. I didn’t know their names or where they lived but I knew, what with 6 surviving children on my mother’s side and nine or so on my father’s, I was bound to have a lot of cousins somewhere. I just didn’t realize there were 7.5 billion of them. We are all cousins. Literally. Whether you believe the earth was decimated by a cataclysmic event that killed all but 10,000-20,000 individuals from whom we all descend or you believe we are all the offspring of Adam and Eve, the result is still the same. Cousins. A few years ago, I reconnected with a cousin whose hobby is locating all the fruit fallen from our ancestral trees. She was curious and kind enough to research my father’s family, which is how I learned my last name was a lie. I’ve written about that before, but for you newcomers the story is that the reason my sister and I never could figure out where our father’s name really came from is because he made it up and forgot to tell us. It wasn’t until our ancestry maven located birth certificate and census documents that I discovered I had a host of first cousins in Southern California. We lived within 20 minutes from one another, and none of us knew about each other. So, armed with a list of names that sounded familiar, I began calling strangers. “Pardon me, but I’m looking for a Fred whose mother’s name was Shirley.” “You’ve got the wrong number, lady.” “Pardon me, but I’m looking for…” and so on until I talked to a very wary man who said, “My sister’s name was Shirley.” “Oh! Wasn’t she your mother?” “No. She was my sister.” “Huh. I always thought Shirley was your mother.” “Why are you calling?” I could tell he was about to hang up. “Um, I’m pretty sure I’m your cousin Carol. Your mother was my Aunt. You played football, right? I had a crush on you.” Now this is either where the Freds of the world hang up the phone and instruct their spouses to not answer it regardless how many times it rings again, or a thread of a memory makes a connection and they get intrigued. Eventually, they agree to a meeting of multiple first cousins who have lived in the same town for thirty years, never knowing each other existed until some random lady called with particularly personal questions. This success led me to believe anyone in the San Fernando Valley might possibly be another cousin. So I started annoying random strangers. For example, in a doctor’s office in Santa Monica I noticed from time to time a handsome man I thought might be a candidate for a possible third husband. “Pardon me, but you look familiar. Do you mind if I ask your name?” “Sam Rubin.” “Oh! Is that as in Rubinawitz from Poland? Because if so, we’re cousins.” “No, it was Rubinstein from Russia.” “Ah, well, you never know. We could still be cousins.” He smiled politely and left the room. I never saw him again. Maybe he asked the doctor to schedule his appointments so they didn’t coincide with mine. You never know. Eventually, I’d be standing in line at a store, glancing at people, debating whether or not to strike up a conversation, believing I had a one in 120 chance of meeting a third cousin twice removed. Then I realized that’s not how these things work. These things work randomly. Randomness rules. Like this: I’m at the nail salon and the lady sitting next to me looks familiar. That’s because we’ve had the following conversation at least twice in the recent past but neither of us can hear or remember anymore. “You look familiar.” “I know; you do too.” “Aren’t you related to SD?” “Yes, she’s my sister-in-law.” “That’s right. Did I tell you how we met?” “I can’t remember. Tell me again.” “We were on a cruise in (insert any country) and we sat at the same table one evening. It turns out my boyfriend is the brother of SD’s daughter-in-law’s father.” “Huh. I think she mentioned that. Where do you live? I forgot.” “In (insert the same city as my sister-in-law).” If this lady’s boyfriend is my sister-in-law’s daughter’s uncle, does that mean that she and I are fourth cousins vaguely removed? I think so. I wish I could remember her name. That’s okay. The next time we sit next to each other at the nail salon we can ask each other’s name and remind each other why we look familiar. Lately, as I’m sure you know by now, I’ve been trying to find my missing cousins from India. None of the Yiddish speaking aunts and uncles on my mother’s side ever mentioned a stop-over south of the Himalayas, but there was the mysterious father’s side. They trace back to Hungary. The Huns invaded Hungary and India. You see where I’m going with this. So I decided to let 23andMe solve the problem. They would have except I had defective spit. I tried twice but apparently my DNA is lacking by their standards so they issued a refund. (Disclaimer: There is nothing wrong with 23andMe. Their test results were brilliantly useful to my son and daughter-in-law. It’s my fault I sent them defective spit.) Not to be daunted, I tried Ancestry dot com. They were able to make more out of my contribution and reported that my ancestry is one hundred percent Eastern European and Russian. That’s it? No Huns before Hungary? No cousins in Kashmir? Nope. I don’t believe them. We’re all related one way or another, even if it’s by a long stretch of imagination. Take, for example, my kinda-sorta son from India. (I nudged my way into his life by bringing him laddoos—sweets, the nectar of the Gods—and then telling him he’s now my third son.) His father recently flew in from Gujarat for a visit and I stopped by to say hello and give him a hearty hug instead of a demure Namaste. Papa used to own textile mills; I love textiles. He wanted to tell me about them; I want to learn about them. His English is minimal; my Gujarati is nonexistent. Therefore, we turned to his son to translate. This was difficult because the son didn’t know what we were talking about. “Ask your father if he knows about the Baghdadi Jews who settled in Surat and were involved in textile production there.” Apparently there’s no simple Gujarati word for Jew because there are 62.7 million people in Gujarat at the moment and only 140 of them are Jewish. It took much back and forth conversation between father and son before Papa said to me: “They came with the Portuguese?” “Yes.” (No, but I said yes to keep the conversation rolling.) “They were weavers?” “Yes!” “Yes, they were weavers.” said Papa with a knowledgeable smile. Aha! Bingo! The missing link! A long time ago, some cousins started walking from Jerusalem to Baghdad, then got bored and walked into India, carting their looms with them. Before their offspring decided to go back to Jerusalem, they had hundreds of years to marry their neighbors. This means the odds are pretty good that Papa and I are tenth cousins four times removed. See? I was right. We’re all related.