New Life

The youngest of my cousins (on my father's side) just had a baby! Another generation has arrived. Mother and child are both recovering well. A truly happy occasion.

My extended family has some interesting branches. My father is the oldest of seven children, born to a minister over a period of many years. My father's youngest sibling - the mother of this particular cousin - is something like 16 years younger than my father. It makes for interesting generations. We also have all kinds of races in our family - we are not your average WASPs.

Here's the breakdown of cousins and the next generation:

• John - four kids, none of whom had any kids, though my brother-in-law has two children (who are 31 and 28) from his first marriage that we've "adopted".
• Naomi - five kids; the interesting thing about this set of siblings is that the oldest of them, who's in his late 50s, adopted two little boys from Guatemala a little over a year ago and, just recently, another little girl who is African-American
• Richard - two children (one of each), neither of which had any children (as far as I know; we don't talk to them much)
• David - five boys; I think there are something like 15 grandchildren
• Lois - four children; not sure how many grandchildren
• Arthur - one daughter who just adopted a little boy from Russia
• Ruth - one son who is half African-American and married to an African-American woman; her first grandchild - the subject of this blog entry - also African-American

My mother's side of the family is also not all WASP-ish. There aren't very many cousins on that side of the family - there's only 7 of us left (2 have died) and 5 grandchildren. One of those grandchildren is married to an Arab guy with a couple of little kids of her own.

Personally, I love the diversity. In today's world, especially with our first African-American president, it's great that my family represents the kind of world we are moving toward. Honestly, except for in an accounting like I just did, I don't even think about the fact that several of my cousins and second cousins aren't the same race as I am. It just doesn't even come up.

New life. New way of looking at the world. Good things.