I have a huge family. My parents were each from families of five children. So there were lots of cousins. My grandmother wanted my brother and me to know our cousins. So every summer for a few years – I believe it was like five but the memories are so infused into my childhood that I am not sure, she would drive us out to my aunt’s farm to visit. Mom has three sisters and a brother.

Her brother was into cosplay before cosplay was cool. He did his costumes without a pattern. I used to have pictures of him in his spiderman costume with Stan Lee. He was one of my childhood heroes. Mostly because of how creative he was. I had a lot of childhood heroes that I could look up to. Still, he lived close so he was not involved in our trips.

One of the sisters was Navy. She lived in Florida and still does. She did not choose to have children till later in life. My cousins on that front are amazing, but closer in age to my son. So they were not around when we were doing these trips.

The trips, and the cousins, were based in Michigan. A gorgeous small community near the Canadian border…Boyne City. My one aunt had a farm and though I don’t know what the other aunt did, she lived nearby. The farmer had two boys, one close to me in age and one closer to my little brother. The other aunt had a boy and a girl. The boy is elder than I, I am not sure by how much, and her daughter was my age. We stayed at the farm when we went. I remember drinking milk straight from the cow and riding ponies. I remember my cousin telling me dirty jokes in the barn. I remember all of us kids playing in the coal shute – it looked like a black sandbox. Then we were all thrown in the bath together because we were covered in coal dust. The summers there were amazing.

Now this story is about one of those trips. We lived somewhere between Virginia and Maryland. Grandma lived in Alexandria. She lived in basically the same place my whole childhood. That is why I often claimed her place was home. She had a station wagon…much like the one pictured on the top of the post. The trip between home and my aunt’s farm was a long one. We would drive up and back. On that particular trip, we were somewhere in Ohio on the way to the farm. Grandma was having trouble with the car, and she never did…but it was not acting right.

I remember her deciding to get off at an exit that was coming up. She took the exit ramp, and it was one of those that turned around and went in a circle. She was going slow, because it was an exit ramp, and thank goodness she was. I remember her cursing…mind you when I say she rarely did. The next thing I saw looking out the window was the passenger side rear axle and wheel rolling away ahead of us down the exit.

She somehow managed to get us pulled off of the ramp into the grass. This was way before cell phones…and she had two little children with her. My brother was a toddler. I am seven years older than he, and we stopped those trips around the time I turned eleven or twelve. I am not sure but I believe that this was on the last one. If it was I really can’t blame grandma. We walked to the nearest place where grandma could call for help.

She was good at handling emergencies. Obviously, we survived, but I remember it being a huge thing. I remember the fear when we saw the axle and the wheel rolling away. Yes, It was worse because it wasn’t just the wheel. Somehow just the wheel would have been comedic. This felt like we were in real danger because it was more than the wheel.

So many of my memories from childhood are based around trauma, mostly because that is what cemented the memories into my brain. This one is both different and not. Though the fear was there… I knew I was safe. This one has all of the wonderful memories of the trips attached. The cousins that I got to visit and know because of them. Two of those cousins are gone now. The little farm boy who told me dirty jokes lost his life on a snowmobile. The daughter of my aunt passed away as well – due to more natural causes. So all I have left of those cousins are the memories of summers spent in childhood. If you can, let your cousins know you love them. I am lucky enough to still have the cousins on my dad’s side.

Well, this was not supposed to be a dark story. I was trying to tell it for the fun oh my goodness type tale it used to be. Now I am melancholy at the loss of the cousins. So I will leave the blog well enough alone, maybe tomorrow I will go back to posting the normal stuff. It depends on how I feel in the morning.