vegas with the family #2
i’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, it’s just that, well, life’s been happening.
a couple of weeks ago my cousins and i went to las vegas… this trip had been in the works since january, which was the last time we all went to vegas. what a great time it was!!
i know that back in january, when we first went, i hadn’t really written about it… i think it may have been because a lot of it wasn’t spent with family that time. a lot of it was spent just iris and i, mainly because we arrived so early and had to leave so early… but this time was different, and i really got to notice a lot of things about my family that i never really noticed before…
one of the things that i am ever so thankful for are my cousins… each one of them has their own quirks, their own flavor to bring to the table… for a long time i had felt kinda distant from all of them… it may have been that time with the rift in the family… being in irvine all the time probably didn’t help much either… but now i really feel close to them, closer than i’ve ever felt before…
take kenny for example. for a long time i really didn’t know him… when he and karen married, there was still this “thing” going on in our family (which i can’t explain really, hence the quotations)… because of that, i really never got the chance to get to know kenny, and it really hasn’t been until i would say the past year that we’ve gotten close… now i’m a godfather to his kid!! really though, i think kenny really turned out to be the right guy for karen and i am so grateful to have him as a cousin.
it’s funny how family really brings out the “you” in you… that weekend was very “real” in the sense that no one put up a facade… i don’t think any of us really put up a front in our family, at least not to each other… and it’s important to note that even if any of us did, we all know what really lies beneath.
what really surprised me was floyd. i’ve known for a long time that deep down, floyd is pretty much a softie. he likes to be tough and tends to be straightforward, which often comes off as rude or uncivilized. floyd is anything but. i realized this once long ago… when the “thing” was going on in our family, floyd once told me that he knows that my dad didn’t want me caught up in everything, and how he understood and didn’t try to force the issue… that saturday at the pool, floyd laid out his thoughts about Len, women, the whole works… what i realized in the end is that family really is everything to floyd. i hope he gets that tatoo he was talking about.
it was great to have pip and al hang with the family also… i mean, they are cousins as well. i think they’re a bit different from the rest of the cousins, but i believe they too play their place in the family… it’s too bad they couldn’t be more available to travel with the family some more, but hopefully someday they’ll be able to do it again.
the last thing that really got me thinking was PJ… i’m really glad that he and Kim are close, and that she checks up on him and stuff… i think that really makes him feel like part of the family… i remember him saying “we’re all family” at some point saturday when we were hanging out… that was really the last thing i expected, but for some reason was very awesome to hear.
i love my family, and i’m ever so blessed to have these people as part of my life. i hope we can do it again!
-m