Growing up with a family as large as mine, I have an abundance of wonderful childhood memories.  My mother has 12 siblings and my father has 7 siblings.  From those siblings or for me – aunts and uncles come many, many, many cousins. 

My parents are very family-oriented and raised me and my siblings to be as such.  Every Sunday, we visited both my paternal grandparents and my maternal grandparents.  Well, us and everyone else. 

We started the day out early with my dad’s family and ended back at our family apartment building where we lived upstairs from my mom’s parents.  On the third floor lived my youngest aunt and her family, which included my cousin who I grew up with more like sisters. 

Both grandparents had small homes, but we all managed to squeeze in and have our family gatherings there.  There was lots of eating going on every Sunday as both homes were filled with homemade Mexican meals followed by pan dulce (Mexican sweet bread) and atole (Mexican porridge-style drink).  My uncles played poker with my card-shark grandfather who always wore a sun visor hat with lights continuously going off throughout the game for distraction.  Meanwhile, my mom and my aunts were in the kitchen cooking a huge meal for all in attendance.  My cousins and I were usually running around the house and racing to answer the doorbell each time it rang with newly arrived family members.  My older cousins sat around watching tv and later cleaned the kitchen after all the cooking and eating had taken place.

On days other than Sunday, I still visited my grandparents on a daily basis.  Living right upstairs made this very easy.  It was throughout the week that I usually had my grandparents all to myself along with my older brother.  We played card games with my grandfather and board games with my grandmother.  Sorry was the game I remember playing the most with grandma.  However, she was a sore loser and disliked being sent back to the start if we sorry-ed her.  So my brother and I had to sorry each other all the time.  On the other hand, I think my grandfather allowed me to win at cards many times.  Bless his soul. 

During the warmer months, grandpa tended to his garden as I played outside with my cousin who lived upstairs.  She is two years younger than I and we are still very close sister-cousins (as we say) to this day.  We didn’t have a pool, but we ran with our swimsuits on through the sprinklers in the yard.  We pretended the grass was a beach and laid out on beach towels with umbrellas behind us.  No not beach umbrellas, but rain umbrellas.  We didn’t have Play Station and computers back then, so we played many games that required creativity and imagination.  I’m grateful for that as I attribute some of our self-made childhood games and activities to my current lifelong creativity and passion for writing and creating.

All my grandparents have passed on and now it’s my parents that are grandparents.  And so the tradition continues.  As long as work and school don’t conflict, my siblings and I now meet at my parent’s house on Sundays with our spouses and kids.  Maybe someday my kids will be coming over to my home on Sundays with my grandchildren.  I guess I need to start by having a child of my own – someday!