Back In The Woods

I always enjoyed spending time with my cousins when growing up. We would play Tarzan and Jane and our youngest sister was Cheetah. We had told her we picked her up at the zoo, so she was a willing participant. And of course I was Tarzan. We spent many days when we were young playing on the farm. We are close to those cousins to this day. I always like seeing them and catching up on what they are doing in their life. In the next town I would spend time with a couple other cousins close to my age. One of those cousins lived with me when I was a single dad with my sons. The boys hated that as he would always tell on them or stop them from watching their favorite television shows. I didn't mind because as a parent of teens, it takes more than one pair of eyes to watch over them. The cousins really are some of my favorite people.

In the early spring one year the cousins were over and we went to one of our favorite places at the farm. Across the street from where we lived there was a large pond, way bigger than the one on our farm. We would go there to skip rocks and swim in the summer, and to slide around in the winter on the ice. We went there one day in the late winter, early spring in about 1960. I will never forget that day. No one wanted to check the ice to see if we could slide around yet or if we might fall in, so as the show off I was and the oldest, I did it. And I fell in and the more I tried getting out the more I was stuck there in that mostly frozen pond. I could see the expressions on the faces of my younger brother and two cousins that showed fear. That made it even worse as I struggled to get free, more ice would break away and leave me with no way to get out. When I started to run out of strength, I found I was able to touch the bottom of the pond. Then I gradually broke more ice until I could walk out as the ice was thinner at the shore line. A scary time for all of us. We would not be doing that again, at least not in the near future we wouldn't.

I was soaked and it was cold and I started to shiver and was really glad it wasn't more than a couple blocks to our house. I couldn't run as I was weak from the struggle and the water made my clothes heavy. I was so glad to see the house and so relieved to be there. When we got home, my mother met us in the yard. When she could see the direction we had come from and she saw that I was all wet, she was so upset that she said, "get your clothes off right now!!" I knew I had better do what she said and now. So, just that quick I took my clothes off, in front of my brother and cousins. It wasn't so bad to do that in front of my brother but my two cousins were there too and one was a female. You know how you are at that age. Not wanting to be naked in front of anyone, let alone a female. Then just that quick she gave me a couple whacks and sent me in the house. I didn't hear the end of that story for several days. My dad laughed but told me, "if you ever do that again, not only will your mother whoop you but I will."

Cousins are just the best and most often you get to have them in your life until one of you is gone.