Cousins

Hayden (left) and Maury

J. S. Bach had twenty children by his first wife, and thirteen more by his second wife.  I ran across this dazzling fact yesterday, and, bemused, reported it on my Facebook page.  I wondered if Johann and his two Frauen were able to think up names for 33 kids.  Or whether he simply had them catalogued, along with his one thousand plus musical compositions, with BWV numbers.

Bach was, in all respects, prolific.  My family, like many families nowadays, is not.  Nor has it been for several generations.  Sure, we do have aunts and uncles and cousins.  But we don't have many of them.  When I was a kid, we never had holidays where the house was full of relatives whom we hardly knew.  We knew 'em all.  Well.  Which was nice, in its own way -- substituting quality for quantity.

Which brings me to the point of this little discussion.  Tomorrow -- late Easter afternoon -- I'm flying down to Sonoma to enjoy the company of most of my small group of relatives -- my sister, my niece and three nephews, and the generation after that.  "The generation after that" would be my two great nieces.  We have entrusted the family name and fortune to just two young ladies, and -- barring some surprises -- I suspect there will be no more.

But again -- quality trumps quantity.  Those two great nieces -- Hayden, age 6, and Maury, age 7 -- have all the intelligence, cuteness, sense of humor, and general delightfulness that the average uncle might hope to find combined in eight or ten great nephews and/or nieces. 

I was with Hayden at Christmas.  She lives in Glendale, California, where she attends kindergarten at a local parochial school  Maury, on the other hand, I haven't seen for over a year.  Maury lives with her mother in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where she is a second grader in an international school.  She and her mom have been in California over her spring break -- and the two cousins have been hanging out together in Southern California.

Both girls are traveling north to the Bay Area during the next day or so, with their respective families, and I'm eagerly looking forward to admiring them in person.  On their small shoulders rests the family's future!