Five children came for four days in August. Michael and I are still recovering, but I would do it again next week. Okay, maybe give it two weeks.
Cousins’ Camp was not a reunion or a tradition. It was our first attempt at something we had talked about for a long time. Retirement has made us aware of how fast time passes, and we decided to stop postponing.
The family tapestry
The five children are Lizzie, who is Michael’s granddaughter, Naomi and Cameron, who are mine, and Marissa and Kaitlyn, our grandnieces, who have always called us Grandma and Grandpa. They come from three households. Three of their parents are ours, and each grew up in a different home under different circumstances.
We have thirteen grandchildren between us, and we love them all. We share life with the five. The reasons for that are ours to carry and not to publish.
Blending families is not a single event. It is a long accumulation of choices to keep showing up for people you were not originally given. We each represent one thread of this family. Every thread is needed to hold it together, and every thread is needed to make it complete and beautiful.
The tapestry and Jesus
A Family Tapestry became one of our two themes for the weekend. I made books for each of the children, hoping they would come to know that our family’s differences make us special. Our memories and traditions are woven together into the tapestry that we are.
Belonging to this family was the first thing we wanted them to understand. Belonging to Jesus was the second, and the more important of the two.
We chose as our verse for the weekend Matthew 19:14. “Jesus said, let the little children come unto me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven is for such as these”. I wrote and illustrated a small book titled Come unto Me that we used every morning to discuss their importance in the eyes of Jesus. Each evening around our campfire, we talked about one aspect of the verse: being seen, being welcomed and belonging.
One of the children, during the campfire discussion, said they knew they belonged because they were liked for who they are and because they felt safe. Neither of us expected any of them to say it so clearly.
Group A or Group B
We agreed five children in one group would be a lot for us to handle, so each morning they were assigned to Group A or Group B. The groups changed every day, with Group A having two children and Group B the remaining three. This proved to be a highlight of our breakfast time, with each of the children waiting to find out who they would be grouped with.
Our days were scheduled, and at breakfast we shared the plan with the children. Each day Michael held a training session on railroading and operations training on his B&O model railroad layout, I worked on art projects relating to the tapestry theme. Group A generally started with Michael, and Group B came with me. Forty-five busy minutes later, we switched groups. There was a snack in the passing time, eagerly anticipated and devoured.
Training Engineers
Michael wrote a curriculum covering what railroads are for, how they run, railroad safety, and how to operate the model layout. One exercise was matching loads (coal, oil, lumber, scrap metal) with the appropriate railroad cars that haul them. Another exercise was sounding locomotive horn signals using the model railroad sound-equipped locomotives and wireless throttles.
Michael assigned each engineer-in-training a train consisting of a locomotive engine, four to five cars, and a caboose to operate. They were tasked with driving this train to a town, performing switching operations to deliver cars to industries, then exchanging cars to take from the industries. From the perspective of gamification, these were switching puzzles they had to solve, working out whether they had trailing or facing point spurs and how to run around the cars to complete the moves.
Badges Earned
All of the children handled the wireless throttle well. They were careful about how they made each move and how they solved the switching puzzles. The oldest two, Lizzie and Marissa, used two forty-five minute sessions to complete the most complex assignments.They stayed focused, worked patiently, and thought through every move carefully. Cameron, who has had the most time operating trains outside of Cousins Camp, successfully completed his switching assignment and helped the others by turning on the road crossing signals and warning bells. Kaitlyn delivered products to her assigned industries, including her own, Kaitlyn’s Popsicle Palace factory. Naomi ran a passenger train across the layout delivering people to the passenger stations. At the last session each of them were rewarded with an official engineer badge to add to their caps.
Encouraging Creatives
I had art projects planned. Creative chaos only touches the surface. All five had opinions about how every project should go, and keeping five different visions moving in roughly the same direction kept me busy.
Most projects were related to the tapestry theme. The main one came in two parts. Each child chose papers, stickers, stamps and ink and made two art boards. The first one they kept whole, and it represented their own family. We cut the second into pieces and redistributed them, so every child ended up with a square from each of the others. I made a board too, cut it up the same way, and added my pieces to the pile. Gluing everything onto a new board gave each of them a tapestry made from all five children plus the two of us. Kaitlyn, Cameron and Naomi pointed out their own pieces on each board, and Lizzie and Marissa, the oldest two, wrote in the names.
Sorting out my art studio will take some time. I expect it will also give me time to reflect on the mornings and afternoons we spent there.
A dirty, muddy creek and a pool with a slide
Every afternoon had one outing and the rest of the day belonged to them playing or in additional art or train time.
Day one was a conservation project at the creek that runs past our property. The five children traipsed up the creek on one side of the road picking up sticks and dug out debris under the culvert bridge on the other. The end result was a cleaner creek, but messier children. Marissa got tangled in a thorn bush, and Lizzie went back after her, leading her to safety. Cameron worked at moving rocks, filled his boots to the brim more than once, and emptied them just as often. Naomi, the littlest of the five, was covered in mud. Kaitlyn declared she never wanted to get that dirty again, but then laughed about it the rest of the weekend.
Day Two
Day two we explored our neighbors’ wooded property the shallow creek also runs through. The walk began with them in the creek again looking for frogs and little fish instead of picking up sticks. This time Lizzie was the stranded one, sinking deep into the mucky mud and getting stuck. Cameron tried to rescue her, and landed square on his bottom, almost getting stuck himself. When the rescue was finally complete, five, once again muddy, children climbed out laughing. We walked on to a clearing where we had a picnic and played on the rope swing our friends had placed in the woods. They collected nature’s treasures, feathers, wildflowers, acorns and nuts, the whole way back. At one point, I noticed Kaitlyn and Lizzie walking hand in hand. My heart was happy.
Day Three
Day three, we talked about the program they would present to their parents the next morning at pickup. We practiced our memory verse and discussed being seen, being welcomed and belonging. They added stories about fruit turtles, frog pond sandwiches, loaded tater tots, pizzas and tacos they made themselves to the creek mishaps and Michael’s evening fire safety lessons.
That afternoon, we visited our neighbor friends’ pool, where two hours of swimming, going down the slide and water basketball flew by. We closed out the afternoon at the local ice cream shop. Marissa, Kaitlyn, Cameron and Naomi all had been there in the past, and they chatted about their memories, including the exact spot where we had taken pictures before. We, of course, replicated those pictures, this time with Lizzie in them.
Remembering and Learning
Remembering together turned out to be the thread running through the whole weekend. The tapestry book was built for exactly that.
The three families had been together occasionally, but not often enough to know much about each other. Prior to the weekend, I asked the parents to share three favorite memories of their own children. I compiled the answers into the tapestry book, and we read them together in the mornings. The parents also gave me three things each child wanted the others to know about them, and that went into the book alongside pictures of them when they were younger. The other four learned something about each cousin they would not have known otherwise. Because these five children are now coming to know each other as one family, the book is a patchwork of who they are and how they belong.
During the day, we asked the five of them the same questions, and we wrote down the answers on cards they now have in their books. Next year, we will look at the cards and see how they have changed.
At lunch and dinner, each group was responsible for setting or clearing the table. I posted a picture of a proper place setting and they followed it. They worked together to put down the placemats, napkins, plates, cups and cutlery in the correct positions. Those not in action watched and cheered as they completed the task. The table clearing team waited for everyone to finish eating, and then carried everything from the table to the kitchen before running off to play in the yard.
Our Final Day
The three full days were over sooner than we expected. Day four arrived, along with parents as excited to see their children as the five campers were to see them. After the hugs, kisses and chatter, the five cousins presented a program about what they learned and what they did during their days together. They recited their Bible verse in unison, and then each of them talked about their favorite part of the weekend. The creek mishaps dominated the stories, and I had to explain quickly that Lizzie did not get stuck in quicksand. It was the mucky bottom of a slow moving creek. Food was also mentioned, especially the blue jello aquarium cups with gummi sharks in them. They set a proper table for their parents, and then Michael said a prayer, blessing each one of the children.
I am writing this two days after they have gone home, and I am still smiling and remembering little things about a weekend that wove five young lives together as cousins. We hope it becomes a tradition. It made us far happier than we expected. I will not forget watching them hugging each other, smiling and still telling stories as they packed up and drove off.
The tapestry that is our legacy
We did not host Cousins’ Camp because we are guaranteed these five will always be in our lives. Not all relationships last. Seven years ago our family changed in ways we did not choose and cannot undo. I understand the limits of our time together now in a way I did not before. Losing people has not made me want to hold back. It has made me want to move forward faster.
Those four days cost us energy we do not have in the quantity we used to. They did not fix anything. We still miss the eight grandchildren who could not be with us, but the five cousins who shared this time will remember a basement full of Grandpa’s trains and a Grandma who let them make an enormous mess, and that memory is permanent whether or not anything else in this family ever changes.
If Michael and I were gone tomorrow, the question is not whether we resolved everything. We may not in our lifetime. The question is what we built with the years we were given and the people who shared them. We are learning to enjoy time with the ones in front of us, love those at a distance by praying for them and speaking their names, and build a life around both.
The tapestry book holds the threads of five childhoods, gathered so they could know each other. The second book tells them how much Jesus loves them and wants them near. We have more shared moments than we expected. That is what we have to show for four days in August, and that is the legacy we are building.
