Will you remember how you played hide-n-seek all over the house? Tucking yourself under blankets, squeezing in the pantry and linen closets, taking in the comforting detergent scent of the towels?
Will you remember how you counted to twenty while jumping on the blow-up mattresses that left only a small maze of floor space for walking?
How you counted so fast that your two cousins on the other team barely made it out of the room to hide?
Will you remember how you giggled at the dinner table over silly talk and words that made zero sense to adult ears but perfect punchlines for a child’s?
How you all loved black olives?
How you played “library” with the books in your moms’ childhood room? How when the piles of books you were “checking out” would get too tall it would slide over and some would drop off the shelf and bounce loudly down the stairs, hitting the door to the room? (The first few thuds had the adults worried and we’d investigate. After that, we knew it was an avid reader’s books.)
Cousin Library
Will you remember how you laughed like you never did with others as you tried to destroy a candy-stuffed pinata?
How you played board games and negotiated the rules so all the ages at the game could play?
Will you remember how you spent thirty minutes chatting about all the world’s problems (“Nia says bedbugs are real.”) in Nate’s room when you were supposed to be sleeping?
And then, when morning came way too early, the only boy cousin in the house crazily “makes a sandwich” by throwing the twin air mattress on a full size air mattress of giggling and screaming girls. Sometimes that craziness turns to tears and scolding from the parents – but will you remember that?
Cousins. Our first friends. I can’t wait to remember the kids’ memories with them.
Getting “ready” for bed,
Are You Zhazha? 
Say what?