My entire life, my idea of family was quite nuclear: Mom, Dad, Brother. That's it (well, okay, at one time that included "wife" but that's another story). We Jalas are immigrants, except AJ, who had the great fortune of being born in Tacoma ...I never felt much of a connection to my aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.; we were separated by an ocean and a culture and sometimes the four of us is all I can handle. Every once in awhile I'd hear of what's going on with them: so-and-so graduated primary school second in her class; remember your cousin Baby-she's a pharmacist now; that's all I knew about them. Sadly, I've lost 3 grandparents without every really knowing who they were; what's perhaps even sadder is that while I loved them on some level (family is family after all), it was difficult to muster the emotion that usually accompanies a loss that close. The most time I've spent with any of them is the few weeks I was in the P.I. when I was 14 (though Lola Mary did live with us here for a few months back in the late '80's)...
Which brings me to the present. Mom's sister, B, along with uncle R and the two kids have been living in SoCal for the last few months after immigrating from the P.I. Now they are moving to O-town next week, and I'm a little weirded out, frankly, in the way that happens when values or concepts you've held to all your life suddenly change. I'm going to "meet" them later this week; I'm looking forward to it, in the sense that I can connect a little bit more to my history, though I don't feel like there's any hole in my life that needs to be filled.
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