Frousins

A couple of weeks back I wrote about how lucky Hud and Tasman were to have cousins in their life. I forgot to reflect on another peer group influencing my kids as they traverse from boys to men (abc, bvd…) and that is the offspring of my friends.

I have known the majority of my close friends since middle school and because of that 30 year journey; they feel more like family to me than just friends. Sure during that span there were vacancies of time spent; school, grad school, marriages, second marriages and global travel would test the strength of the friendship as gaps of time can change individuals. But mostly no matter how long we were apart and mere seconds after seeing each other, we would find ourselves laughing at the same stupid jokes, reminiscing about the same stupid long weekends, allowing the once pliant glue of friendship to harden with two fart jokes, an off colour, not-so-clandestine comment about the size of my man breasts and one earnest reflection about the passage or tragedy of time.

So now, as the gaps of time spent away from each other are measured in weeks, instead of years, our respective children are now exposed to regular visits. From babies huddled cutely on couches to toddlers bashing each other with rubber hammers, my boys now see my friend’s kids often and I love it.

Talking to Hudson yesterday about the seven year old daughter of one of my friends who joined us at the cottage this weekend, he reflected that he has known her since she was born. And it was him that mentioned she felt like his cousin before I could suggest the potential depth of the relationship.

A friend of Steph’s, with three boys neatly dappled around the ages of my boys, all fall into the same instant familiarity of friendship on a sleep over or weekend away, even without the daily ritual of going to the same school or having completely separate more frequent friendships.

Two of oldest friends just had babies last year and it will be interesting to see how Hudson and Tasman adapt to being that much older than my friend’s kids.

I see the drooling babysitter eyes of these two tired men and their respective wives, thinking hmm, four or five more years and Hudson will be running the show while we enjoy some adult time  And to be honest, I hope he does accept his role in the hierarchy of all his frousins.

• Surrounding my boys with people that love them.
• Giving them opportunities to interact with many different great and wonderful people that I cherish.Two pretty solid additional bullet points for my giant non-existent parental slide deck.