Skinny bowtruckles and the velveteen mayor

Wherein the past weekend of wonderful people is paid tribute
Part I of V

It begins with a wedding.



First, a little family background. My Mom is the oldest of eight Boggan kids — six girls and two boys. I have 17 cousins, and I am in the elder bunch. But really that’s not the whole picture. We were three more once, for one thing. When I was little, maybe 5, my cousins Yvonne, Keith and Yvette were killed in a car accident on their way home from church, along with my Uncle Earl (my Mom’s brother and my godfather) and a neighbor child.

My Aunt Marion was thrown from the car and woke up from a coma two weeks later to find out what had happened to her husband, her children, her world. Gaah.

Aunt Marion remarried and had two daughters (the spitting images of their lost half-sisters), Natalie and Rachael, giving us two more official-but-not-blood cousins. Then my Mom and her siblings also have one cousin, Fred, who married Barb and had two boys, Kevin and Brian, giving us two second cousins. It’s been many years since we’ve really seen any of these quasi cousins, except for when I stayed on Kevin’s couch when I first moved to Florida 10 years ago. Barb and Fred (Fritz) are still close with my Mom and some of her siblings, though, and they come to these big family events.

I’m not sure how much of that you need to know, but I didn’t really know how to write this without it.

The Delineation of Us 18:
Bob and John
Rick, Pat and Marc
Me
Jenny, Pete, Sam, Ben
Jill, Erin, Sara, Josh, Katie, Megan
Ann and Joey

My cousins are now almost all married — six of us left single, I think, and me the only one in the upper eschelon. (Correction: John, who is my age, just got divorced. Seven.) There are 18 offspring of the cousins and their spouses, with one more in the immediate offing (due Nov. 2). So you can imagine what it would be like for ALL of us to get together. I’m about to start eliciting promises about my own if-it-ever-happens wedding. I want everyone there. So: 17 cousins, 11 spouses, 18 chilluns, plus our seven progenitors and their spouses, who number … 10, and Sylvia, our step-grandmother.

57 people including me. 60 with Barb, Fritz and Aunt Marion. 61 once Next Baby Marthia arrives. Bigger than the population of the principality of Monaco! Really, I'm pretty sure that's true.

part II below