The 55er Club

Once upon a time, fifty-five years ago next year to be exact, five cousins were born in the same year. When the great & momentous occasion of their 5th birthday & going to Kindergarten arrived, the mommies & daddies decided to celebrate with a week end camp out at the end of the summer just before school would begin. The camp out became an enduring family tradition up until the 55er club reach into their teen years & the families got too busy with other things.

The other day I was pondering the arrival of my 55th birthday in 2010 & realized that this is again a very momentous occasion! So I contacted the one cousin I am in contact with on FB & one thing led to another & now there are 3 of us chatting away on FB about getting together next year to celebrate our joint wonderfulness! We are trying to get cousin number 4 to get with it & come to the dark side of Facebook, he is not doing well physically so other things may be much more important for him at this time. Cousin number 5 sadly did not survive our 12 year due to an awful accident that took her short life.

Who knows where this all will lead. My cousins & I are very thankful for our fun childhood & shared stories of those camp outs each year. We are also very different people now & the emotion of getting to know one another all over again has been really interesting & sometimes just too much for me. I am not the quiet, reserved, easy-to-boss-around cuz anymore & I am needing to very intentionally assert myself as this new free person to my cousins even just through chats on FB. It's crazy! The old feelings of being mowed over by stronger personalities is so tempting to just go along with. But, that will not happen now, because I am different.

Let's see where this will go in the coming weeks. I am seriously thinking about writing about our camp outs & this process for a magazine article. Who knows, it could be my big breakthrough into freelance writing.