Staying in Touch with Family

You know how sometimes you just lose touch with people?  Not their fault.  Not your fault.  Just happens.

My Mother's side of the family is spread out.  I grew up knowing cousins who were descendants of her Father.  But many of my cousins who were descended from my Grandfather's siblings and who lived at the time of my youth in Minnesota, I did not know and never met.  I have no idea why my branch of the family was separate from the other branches.  I suspect there is some back story there, but I have never found it.

Anyway, one of these long lost cousins and I found each other when I was actively tracing my family tree.  We emailed each other regularly.  Then when I became interested in other things, the genealogy got set on the back burner and the emails slowed down and finally stopped.  No particular reason.  We were on good terms with each other.  We just sort of drifted on.

Well, this morning when I checked my email, I found one from her.  What a lovely surprise.  There was no particular reason for it - just to say hello and tell me what she had been doing and ask how I was.  I emailed her back right away, bringing her up to speed on my family and letting her know that in spite of this thing called aging, I was still as mean and ornery as always.  :)

My cousin lives on the East Coast.  She mentioned that the blizzard a couple of weeks ago had dumped about three feet of snow on them.  She works at  local grocery store and she said that a day or so before the storm hit, the grocery shelves were pretty much emptied.  Can't say that surprised me much.  Same thing happens here before a bad storm is due to roar through.

That email served to remind me how important it is to stay in touch with family.  Granted, all of us have the Crazy Uncle Louie or the Weird Cousin Jane that we kind of wish were related to someone other than us, but that's not the case here.  I don't remember ever meeting her in person and we have communicated mostly through emails, but even so, I really like my cousin Jackie.  And I am glad she took the time to write.

I need to do a better job of staying in touch with my family.